This week's episode of Art on the Air features Meg Barrow, the new curator at the Depot Museum and Art Gallery. Lori Waxman, an art critic at the Chicago Tribune, is also interviewed. The episode also highlights the summer classes and camp offerings at the Chesterton Art Center, including expanded programming for different age groups. The interviewees discuss the various art techniques and themes that will be explored in these programs. They also mention upcoming events like the April 27th gala and the Chesterton Art Fair in August. The episode concludes with information about other arts events and announcements.
This week on Art on the Air, features the new curator from the Depot Museum and Art Gallery, Meg Barrow, who brings a wealth of experience to Beverly Shores Exhibit Space. Next we have Chicago Tribune art critic, Lori Waxman, who also serves as senior lecturer at the Art Institute of Chicago. Our spotlights on Chesterton Art Center's summer classes and camp offerings, plus info about the April 27th gala. Welcome, you're listening to Art on the Air on Lakeshore Public Media, 89.1 FM, WVLP 103.1 FM, our weekly program covering the arts and arts events throughout Northwest Indiana and beyond.
I'm Larry Breckner of New Perspectives Photography, right alongside here with Esther Golden of The Nest in Michigan City. Aloha, everyone. We're your hosts for Art on the Air. Art on the Air is supported by an Indiana Arts Commission Arts Project Grant, South Shore Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Art on the Air is heard every Sunday at 7 p.m. on Lakeshore Public Media, 89.1 FM, also streaming live at lakeshorepublicmedia.org, and is available on Lakeshore Public Media's website as a podcast.
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We'd like to welcome to Art on the Air Spotlight, from the Chesterton Arts Center, we have Hannah Hammond-Hagman, she's going to the Executive Director, and Jillian Bridgman, who's the Programs Manager. They're going to tell us about some of the programs they have coming up, especially in summer, the summer programs in camp. Welcome back to Art on the Air Spotlight. Thanks for having us. Yes, thanks for having us. Yeah, great seeing both of you. So, tell us, I guess, first of all, since summer programs are running, pretty, you know, coming up, and this is a great sign-up period, tell us all about that, Jillian.
Yeah, absolutely. So, our 2024 Youth and Teen Summer Programs are now open for registration on our website, which is chestertonarts.org. Each topic is going to highlight various art techniques and media, there's going to be discussions about modern artists, and all are going to follow a unique theme that encourages creativity and collaboration amongst all the students that are attending. This summer, specifically, we're very excited because we've expanded our programming into two separate categories, so we're going to have Summer Art Camp, serving ages 5 to 12, and then Teen Studio Intensive, serving ages 13 plus, and our hope with this expansion is that not only are we going to be able to serve a wider variety of ages and interests among the students, but obviously we're hoping that it's going to bring more and more kids here so that we're serving the max amount that we can throughout those summer months that, you know, kids get a little restless.
And Jillian, I want to say, it is such a robust offering, and I want to take every single one. Can I be a 13 plus, please? I feel the same exact way. I told the teachers that. I said, I'm just going to come and observe you guys, but I'm going to sit around and come audit. No, it's fantastic. There's lots of great topics. We have seven weeks of camps that are happening, and among those seven weeks, there's actually 14 topics among the different ages, and those are going to run starting the week of June 3rd all the way through the week of July 22nd.
Each program is going to run Monday through Friday, which is also something new. We're expanding to serve the full week this year, and we have our morning session offers from 8.30 to 11. The afternoon sessions are from 12 to 2.30, and the tuition is going to be $150 per student per session with scholarships available, of course. Lots of information is on the website. Yep. Yep. So, you have a family membership, right? Correct. Yeah. If you become a family member, you get 10% off the tuition.
Yeah, absolutely, and I'll kind of break down summer camps versus teen studio intensive quickly for you. So, as I said, summer art camps are going to be for ages 5 to 12. There's nine topics for this age group, ranging from ceramics, architecture, printmaking, drawing and painting, 3D sculpture, as well as fiber art, and those sessions are going to run starting on June 3rd all the way through July 22nd, as I said, with different topics each week.
And then our teen studio intensives for ages 13 plus have five topics to choose from, including ceramics, printmaking, video production, sewing, and colored pencils, and those ones are going to run the week of June 3rd through the week of July 15th. And we started these teen intensives because through our teen arts group, which is a free outreach program that Jillian runs, we're realizing that it's a gap in programming, especially in those summer months. So we wanted to offer more for that age group during the summer so they can come and be with their peers and create in a really safe, relaxed atmosphere.
So you are getting close to capacity on what you're doing right now, and I guess I know as I'm sharing with our audience, I am on the board there, but we're looking for expansion eventually here, so with all the programming and doing, but looking toward like the fall, just kind of looking ahead, what types of classes are you planning for then? Yeah, absolutely. So we've kind of built up our in-house programming for both adults and youth.
So typically per month, you can see about 20 things being offered amongst the different age groups. We have monthly classes for kids and teens that are called afterschool art, as well as afterschool sculpture. And then we also feature specialty classes every single month for that age group as well. And then our adult classes, you kind of have your more popular topics that you see year round, including ceramics and stained glass, painting and drawing, and then we also mix in photography, printmaking, we're even incorporating more fiber for adults, weaving, so lots of exciting things are on the radar at the center.
And what's the teen arts group doing? Yeah, so our teen arts group right now is kind of at an exciting point. We have an exhibit up at Red Cup Cafe that's going to run through February and March. And then in the spring, they're going to start a public art project. They're actually going to work on a mural here at the building of Chesterton Art Center. And that's going to really occupy their spring into summer schedule. And then we'll kind of switch gears and go right into planning our booth at the art fair.
So they have a busy, busy season ahead of them. Are they going to do another public like sculpture like they've done in the past? This year, our annual public art project is going to be the mural. So rather than a sculpture or kind of an interactive piece, this year, we wanted to do something that was a little bit more permanent. So we are going to be painting a mural on the exterior of our building here on 4th Street.
Oh, that's so exciting. I know, it's really exciting. Well, we only have about a minute and a half left. We also have some other things like exhibits that might be in April, May, and also some events like, well, actually, next week, you have the gala and also their signups for the art fair. Tell us, Hannah, a little bit about what that's about. Yeah, our annual fundraising gala is April 27th at Sand Creek. We're really looking forward to a night to celebrate the art center with our community here in Chesterton.
And of course, upcoming in August 3rd and 4th is the Chesterton Art Fair. It's our 65th annual this summer. Exhibitions for artists are still open until April 30th, and all that information can be found on our website, chestertonart.org. And signing up for things or how to find out information about all the classes? All the things at chestertonart.org, or you can always give us a call, 219-926-4711. Well, we'd like to thank you for coming on Art in the Air Spotlight.
That's Hannah Hammond-Hagman and Jillian Bridgman. You can contact at chestertonart.org or call them there. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having us. Thank you both for all the wonderful classes that you're offering at the Chesterton Art Center. And the Spotlight Extra, the Northwest Indiana 2024 Listen to Your Mother, a series of live readings by local writers about motherhood, will be presented at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 28th at the Hobart Arts Theater.
Art in the Air Spotlight and the complete one-hour program on Lakeshore Public Media is brought to you by Macaulay Real Estate in Valparaiso, Olga Patrician, Senior Broker. And as a reminder, if you'd like to have your event on Art in the Air Spotlight or have a longer feature interview, email us at aotaatbrech.com, that's aotaatbrech, B-R-E-C-H, dot com. Art in the Air would like to congratulate our show's theme music composer and vocalist, plus our very dear friends, Billy Foster and Renee Miles Foster, upon being recognized with the 2024 Katie Hall Educational Foundation's Merit of Distinction Award at their 11th annual luncheon on April 6th.
We cannot think of two more deserving people in our community, and we are so very proud to call them our friends. Congratulations, Billy and Renee. Hi, this is singer-songwriter Kenny White, and you're listening to Art on the Air on Lakeshore Public Radio 89.1 FM and on WVLP 103.1 FM. We would like to welcome Meg Barrow to Art on the Air. Meg was the longtime executive director and chief curator of the Shingoji Museum at Aurora University. She joined AU in 1996 as a museum educator.
During her tenure, she elevated the collection of North American art with exhibits that demonstrated great respect for the Native American community. For the last year, she has been the curator for the Beverly Shores Depot Gallery. Thank you for joining us on Art on the Air. Aloha and welcome, Meg. It's so nice to finally meet you. Thank you. It's so nice to meet you as well. And of course, Meg, we have already met last year at some of the exhibits that were out there.
Pleasure to meet you. And I kept prompting you. I really wanted to get you on the show so you could share your amazing background. And that's where we want to start off with, your origin story, how you got from where you were to where you are now. So tell us all about Meg. Okay. Well, I grew up in Massachusetts. My father got transferred to St. Louis area. I went to the University of Missouri. But before that, what prompted my major in art was my junior high school, middle school art teacher, Mr.
Garth, who really encouraged me and made me feel like I had something to offer. So Mr. Garth, nods to him, went to the University of Missouri and majored in art education and met my husband, but moved to Elgin, Illinois, ended up teaching in the public schools. I taught art in Batavia, where we lived. And then I had an opportunity to borrow some materials, teaching materials, from Aurora University's Shingothi Museum. And a few years later, on my second time, they were looking for a curator of education.
And so I thought I would love to do that. I've always loved museums. They have always been a refuge for me, a solace. And so a week later, I was hired. And 27 years later, I was hired as Emerita Museum Director and Chief Curator. And I also developed our museum studies program and taught in that. Later in your life, did you have any pre-elementary school interest in art? Did you like doing drawing at home or do any kind of creativity like that before you had your teacher that influenced you? Yes, I did.
Yes, it was all, of course, very informal. I don't remember a lot in elementary school. I think I remember creating a hat for a special day, but with a cow jumping over the moon. That's all I remember. You've now come to Beverly Shores. You've been there for about a year. And of course, your new endeavor is that you're the curator for the Depot Art Gallery there. And so you've been there for a year, but tell us a little bit about the experience of first coming to Northwest Indiana and moving there, and then also taking over the Depot, which is kind of one of our little jewels in Northwest Indiana.
Thanks for asking. Yes, I retired, and I have children in Valpo. And I knew I wanted to live in the woods. I wanted the opportunity to resurrect my art practice. I had been working with artists, of course, and in the art field for many years, but I never had time raising three children and working to really devote to my art practice. So I determined I wanted to move into the woods and begin to do that, find some creative energy here.
What is that art practice? Painting, oil, watercolor, really multimedia. I like many things. I majored in sculpture in school, but was never able to afford to do much beyond that. And I love painting. My neighbor asked me, just as I was moving in, he asked me what I did as he was introducing himself, and I told him what I had done in my previous life. And lo and behold, he was on the board of the Depot, and he said, oh, you need to come to a meeting.
And so I did. And you know how these things go. It wasn't long before I was unretired, unretired, yeah, that's a good way to put it, a volunteer. Yeah, we know the feeling. That's how our radio show is. This is very much a retirement gig for me and my post-theater career. OK, OK, well, then you understand. But I am thoroughly enjoying it, and I'm really enjoying bringing artists that I've developed relationships with over the years to our gem of a museum and gallery.
And last year, because you had Native American things at Aurora, you brought that to the Depot, and a great experience. I came out the evening that you had the demonstration outside, and the wonderful painting, and we actually had her on the show to interview her in depth. Yes, I remember. But yeah, so vision-wise, what are you looking to come with this next season? We'll talk about the 5x5 later on, but what are some of the exhibits that you're looking at, and maybe even not this year, but even next year, what's coming up there? Well, we have a wonderful lineup this year.
We are doing the 5x5, as you mentioned, which is our fundraiser for Beverly Shores. In June, a local artist, Chris Cassidy, Inspiration Over Time, he is a photographer. In July, we're very excited to be partnering with Shirley Hines Land Trust to bring an artist that I was privileged to work with at the university back in 2017, Joel Sheasley. And he is the emeritus professor from Wheaton College, had been there about 30 years, and he's a plein air artist.
So over all four seasons, he has painted 15 paintings of both Shirley Hines and Beverly Shores properties. They are exquisite, so we're looking forward to sharing those. He's really a contemplative painter, and I think you'll see that in the sensitivity that he brings to his work. I think this quote says it all, there are many ways that human hands can serve the landscape, but painting offers service by providing imaginative ways to see the land. If we can learn to see it, we can learn to love it and perhaps save it.
So he's very invested in nature and preserving nature and uses his art practice to bring attention to that. Then in August, we are bringing a show called Iterations Beyond Photography with Joel DeGrande. What we're featuring in Joel's work, Joel and his wife, Amanda Freeman, were residents of Beverly Shores, but he also was a professional photographer. The work that we're exhibiting is very unique. They are life-size iterations of a series he did on uniforms. He has taken these, he was a little discouraged when everybody had a cell phone and everybody became a photographer, and he said, I have to do something different.
He took these, this series that he did on uniforms, and embellished them, blew them up to five feet by four feet high. I think people are going to find them very, they're multimedia now, and I think people are going to find them very interesting. Then in September and October, Let Your Light Shine, plein air artists exhibit some select artists to carry on the theme of plein air artists. I see on the website, you have a thing going on in April.
It's the Whimsical War Hall, and it's from Chesterton High School or something like that. That's right. Last year, I started to, being an art educator, I really wanted to continue to bring young people into the process. This is the second year we're opening in April, and Whimsical War Hall Pop Portraits by Exceptional Learners of Chesterton High School. This is a special needs class, and these students just do remarkable work, and we're looking forward to having them.
Back to the plein air, is that what you do? Do you paint plein air? Yes, you know, to say what I do now is very interesting, because there is no now yet. I got pulled into curating again, and so I'm looking forward to, as I said, resurrecting my art practice. But yes, I did do plein air work at one time, and I love it. And you're in a beautiful place to do that, too. That's exactly right.
I do have a space in my home, when I was looking, that I will have a studio that will allow me to paint indoors and out on a screened-in deck, so I'm very excited about that. So will your painting be included in the show? I don't think I'm going to be able to do that, but at some point. That'll be nice. Thank you. You're going to curate your own exhibit. That's perfectly okay, you know, and everything.
Is it? Okay. Sure it is. Is there ever talk of expanding the season? I know mostly you run kind of like spring to fall, with I think there's a little thing that in November, maybe become a year-round gallery. I mean, I know it's more work for you, and I'm doing that, but I'm just wondering if that's a possibility of becoming a year-round. You know, I'm the newcomer here, so I'm probably not the person to ask. One of the things is we are a self-funded organization.
We are all volunteers. The city does not provide any funding for us, the state, unless we apply for grants. So it does limit. We don't have, as you may or may not know, many folks in Beverly Shores live here a half of the year. Right. And so it gets rather quiet here. So we hadn't been open in April. I opened that for the high school show, and that worked well. So we did add April to our list.
Beyond that and the holiday show, I do not see anything coming up in the future. But I like to think of our museum, if I were going to give it a label and give people an idea who've never been there, we are in a historic building built in 1936. It is a still-working depot. We own half of it, what had been the residence of the station master, mistress, actually just before it closed. And we saved it from demolition, and it was put on a national register.
And now I like to think of us as a boutique museum. We are not large, but when you think of a boutique, you think of selective quality work that you can view in an intimate surrounding. We always have a wonderful art party out on the grass before our show, before and during our shows. So please come join us. We would love to have folks. Everyone is welcome. And it is. Yeah, the gallery is beautiful. It is.
And so is the museum. You know, I love the whole thing. Thank you. It's like a trip back in time, and of course when the South Shore starts its normal running, it'll be functioning completely. I know they're doing testing with the double tracking. So tell us about, and I know you weren't there when it was created, but the 5x5, we talked a little bit about the date of it, but it's kind of unique is how it all works.
People have to show up when they buy a ticket. So tell us about that whole process for our audience. Yes, sure. I'd be happy to. This is really our major fundraiser for the year, and it works because it's made possible by the artistic donations of local enthusiastic artists. So we provide 5x5 canvases or frames to artists that they can pick up at Firm's gallery right on 12, and they paint, draw. They can also do photographs. All media are involved, but it must be 5x5.
It cannot extend beyond. So those are donated. We hang them in our gallery, and people do buy tickets, and we sell them. Each piece, the 5x5, is sold for $55. So you can buy one. You can buy three. People tend to collect them over the years and have sort of a montage of 5x5s, but yeah, it's wonderful. It's a lot of fun, and yes, there is a buying for the front of the line to be the first in.
It's mostly polite, I would say. Over the years that I've seen, it's been pretty polite, but people really get there and get ready to get that little red tag on whatever piece they want. That's right. You get a red tag as you walk in. So is there a preview ahead of time before, or are you just going in blind? You are going in blind if you are a guest. No one has offered bribes to me yet, but...
No cruises offered or anything? No, nothing like that. Well, the deadline for submission is April 21st, and there are several places that you can bring your completed 5x5. You can bring it to Firms and Gallery on 12, right across from the Goblin and the Grocer, and you can also bring it to the museum on the weekends. And speaking of the museum, you also have like a gift shop, and I know we've interviewed about that before, but tell us about, for maybe our audience members that don't know, about what's in the gift shop and when you are open for accessing it.
Yes, thank you for asking. The gift shop really is a very important means of providing funding for the museum and the gallery. So we actually promote local artists' work, jewelry, some beautiful jewelry, artwork, paintings, carvings, sculpture. We have a wonderful woman who works in glass, and actually, during Joel's show, we are going to be part of the Beverly Shores Garden Walk, because we have a new garden in front of our museum. And so Karen Brown will be there with her glass work, promoting that, which we will be selling in the store, as well as she'll have some pieces out on the ground.
So we like to enjoy it when we're open. Right. Is it still a 30% commission on work sold? Yes, it is, yes. We've never taken it beyond that at this point. As you probably know, other galleries charge at least 50, you know, take 50%, but we're trying to prevent having to do that, and we're just taking 30%. From the artist's perspective, what you do is you just bump, unfortunately, your price up to cover that. That's probably true.
We also want to keep those prices reasonable. Oh, sure, sure. And you're looking for, you know, there's sometimes a perception that the Depot is mostly artists that are, because it's kind of an artist community in Beverly Shores, but you're looking for artists from all over to become part of the exhibit. Absolutely, yes. And we are looking for all over. As you were mentioning last year, we had Sharon Hoogstraten, Potawatomi artist, who is from Chicago. We had, this year, Joel Sheasley is from Wheaton, Illinois.
I'm trying to think who else I brought last year that, oh, I brought the quilters from the Mexican Museum of Fine Arts, and Tilson came. We have quite an array. It is not just local artists, but our local artists, of course, are wonderful as well. This is not so much a current question, but when you were at Aurora, that's when the pandemic hit. How did that influence you, first of all, at work, and also personally? What kind of withdrawal, how did that affect you? You know, I retired in 2020.
I was not there for that. I was in the process of selling my home and getting it ready for the market and moving. I actually, my daughter was here from Hong Kong, and we had a wonderful time getting the house ready and sitting out back at the fire pit with some wine every evening. It was a nice time to hunker down. I realized other people were maybe, were not as fortunate, but I did not mind. I know it influenced our show.
We used to do the show live and have the recorded version sent over, and now we do the current format. It really ended up being a gift because we can schedule our guests, put together tighter shows. I know the pandemic was really kind of a gift for Art on the Air. We talked a little bit about the future, so you're not expanding exhibits, but what other types of things are you looking for? What type of artists are you looking for for maybe the following seasons? Well, I would like to continue in the process bringing various members from other cultures and other perspectives to our museum.
As I said, last year was Sharon Hoogstraten and the Mexican Museum of Fine Arts. Next year, I am just giving some thought to some ideas. I have some wonderful friends, one at the Field Museum, and they are fantastic artists. They are both American Indian, so I'd like to bring some more Native artists here. And then I'm just looking, of course, our whimsical Warhol pop portraits will be some folks that don't usually get to exhibit. So they'll have an opportunity and we'll have an opportunity to support them.
And right now, I think you'll have to have me back on because I can't think of anyone else that I'm trying to bring. Well, that's okay. I would like your impression of coming briefly, as we kind of wrap up here in the last couple of minutes, about coming to Northwest Indiana from like Elgin and kind of that community, which is quite a bit different than, you know, landing out here in the Duneland. Yeah, I'm thoroughly enjoying it.
The community has just been so welcoming, fun-loving, interesting. I just have, I'm thoroughly enjoying being here. I love the surroundings. I always take the back roads wherever I'm going. It's just beautiful. I'm very glad to be here, very thankful that I found a home that I love and a community that I love. And have you a chance to visit some of the other arts organizations and galleries in Northwest Indiana? I have, yes, been to the Besnick, been to SFC Gallery.
I have a plan to go to, oh, now you're South Shore and Muncie. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Chesterton Arts Center. Chesterton Arts Center I've been to, yes, wonderful. They do great shows and Art Barn. And I love these, you know, these local communities of artists. Yes. Well, in our last minute here, we want to give you a chance to, you know, just briefly touch back on things coming up. You have the current exhibit, which we just talked about with the students, and then the 5x5.
So tell us all about that as we wrap up. Yes. I want to also let you know, once again, about Learning the Land, Stewarding Beauty, paintings by Joel Sheasley in our partnership with Shirley Hines Land Trust. There will be two lectures, one just prior to the opening reception at 4 o'clock with Joel, where he'll talk about being a plein air artist, and then with Joel and a naturalist on August 10th out at Meadowbrook, the properties of the Land Trust, where he will be talking about where he painted, and the naturalist will be talking about why that area is important.
So I think we'll have a really interesting exhibit for that time. Well, we appreciate coming on Art on the Air. That's Meg Barrow, curator of the Depot Gallery, and 5x5 is coming up on May 3rd. Submissions are still available through April 21st, and you can find, of course, information at bsdepot.org. Meg, thank you so much for coming on Art on the Air. Thank you very much for having me. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Art on the Air listeners, do you have a suggestion for a possible guest on our show, whether it's an artist, musician, author, gallery, theater, concert, or some other artistic endeavor that you are aware of, or a topic of interest to our listeners? Email us at aotaatbrech.com, that's aotaatbrech, B-R-E-C-H, dot com.
Art on the Air is supported by an Indiana Arts Commission Arts Project Grant, South Shore Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. This is Memorial Opera House Executive Director Megan Stoner, and you are listening to Art on the Air on Lakeshore Public Media, 89.1 FM, and on WVLP, 103.1 FM. We are pleased to welcome Lori Waxman to Art on the Air. Lori has been the Chicago Tribune's primary art critic since 2009. She also teaches art history and art criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Since 2005, she has conducted a work of performance art about art criticism entitled Sixty-Word Minute Art Critic. Through this, she has provided brief written reviews to visual artists in various geographical locations on a first-come, first-served basis. This made possible by being the recipient of a Warhol Foundation's Arts Writers Grant and a 2008 Rabkin Prize. Lori is the author of several books. The most recent is Keep Walking Intently, a History of Walking as an Art Form. Thank you for joining us on Art on the Air.
Aloha and welcome, Lori. It's really great meeting you. You too. Thanks for having me. Well, Lori, we always like to find out the story behind our guests. I always like to say your origin story. I always like to say how you got from where you were to where you are now. So tell us all about your journey. Okay. Well, it's a 47-year-long journey thus far. I was born in Montreal, Canada. I am still Canadian. That's what my paperwork says.
I grew up in an English-speaking household, but learning French in school, that's kind of a big deal if you're from Montreal, although it doesn't seem to matter in very many other places. But whether you're from an Anglophone or a Francophone family is the origin in that place. I went to public school. I would love to have studied art more, but I was not really allowed. I had to take sciences because I thought I would become an architect, but that didn't end up happening.
Lori, were the arts offered in school? Because I know when I went to school, they weren't really offered until like eighth grade. They were not offered. And then when they were offered, you had to choose between arts or science. I had to take science because I thought my track was toward architecture. You would think that art-making would be an important element in the schooling of someone going into architecture, but they thought that physics and chemistry was more important and advanced math, and so that's what I got in high school.
But I really wanted to take printmaking and sculpture and painting. So continuing on from school, you were still in school and studying sciences, then let's go from there. Sure. I somehow got myself sent to New York for my freshman year of college, to Columbia. Realized very quickly as a family that that was not affordable because American educations do not cost what Canadian educations cost in the post-secondary world, and so I got one year of that, but it was quite fundamental being like an 18-year-old in New York City alone.
It was marvelous. It was a good year. Exciting. Yeah. Extremely exciting. I don't really know how anybody gets a whole lot of studying done as a student in New York because there's so much else to learn from outside of the academy. It's a very invigorating weekend when you go to New York. Yeah. But then, you know, if you get like nine months, wow. Wow. Went back to Montreal, went to McGill, which is, you know, an excellent school, went to England for a year abroad in a real nowhere place called Lancaster up in the north, which was incredibly boring.
The main place in town was a prison. So I spent weekends in Liverpool and Manchester, which had fantastic club scenes at that point in time, and went down to London when I could, you know, spend the time to take the train down. I still have that train journey kind of memorized in my head between Lancaster and London because I went there a couple of years ago and was shocked to realize that the landscape was familiar still to me.
Wow. Wow. Yeah. I had a couple of really nice days in Manchester. Let's see. I took some bicycle trips in Ireland, kind of have a soft spot for Ireland and Irish music and biking more than walking. Actually, we can talk about that later. But really, I would have written a book about bicycle art if it existed. It just doesn't. I went to walking. I don't know. It could if you wrote a book about it. I've looked.
I mean, you know, there's a little pile in my office of any bicycle related art that I come across, and it's very small. I came back to Montreal, finished my degree, worked part time for the Montreal Jewish Film Festival, took art classes finally at Concordia University, started writing for newspapers. Oh, that's important. When I was at McGill, I started, it's the first time I published art criticism for the McGill Daily Student Newspaper. I would see art shows in the city, and I decided that's what I wanted to write about.
So I did. So what kind of art were you producing at the time? Oh, I mean, kind of like a collage at heart. I still make collage, but it's completely private or for like gift making purposes. Yeah. I just like to cut things up. I like visual media. I like to recombine it. Small scale sits on my desk. Portable. Or smaller. I like portable art. Mm-hmm. Small things. You can like put in a pocket or put in a drawer or put on the wall.
Take it with you in the waiting room. Definitely that too. Great if it's flexible and can't get crunched up. So you're writing to McGill, and then so that's the start of your criticism journey. Yes, actually. So I have been a critic since college, I guess, a published critic since college. And then, I don't know, a year after graduating from McGill and doing all this part-time work and trying to figure things out, I decided I would get a master's degree in art history.
That art was what I cared about most in the world and also had more aptitude for thinking about in an interesting way and writing about. Like I tried all the different art forms in college. I took cinema classes. I took contemporary literature classes, all the stuff that I like. I just like contemporary culture across the board. But for whatever reason, my analytic capacity is more profound when it comes to visual art. And I enjoy the engagement with it as a writer.
Like I just want to read fiction and not do much else with it. Right. I really benefit personally from writing about it. So which came first? Did you go to an art exhibit and have really strong feelings about it that you wanted to write about? Or did you go into it saying, oh, let me, I want to go try this? How did that initial... And do you remember your feelings about that first exhibit? I definitely don't remember, but I'm going to guess it's option number one.
Okay. I just went to see art out of interest. And I lived in a very highly cultured city. I grew up in one. But I was always a writer. And I just put two and two together. So fabulous. Right. You know, sometimes people don't understand what the role of a critic is. We've had theater critics on actually fairly recently telling us about how that works. When you approach something as a critic, you know, a lot of times people think critic is kind of a negative thing.
But tell us about like the process when you go view something and then you go to write about it. The purpose of it in terms of like when you write it, especially for the Tribune or something else. Well, I have a whole system. I like systems. So I have an Excel document on my computer that I've been keeping for years and years and years. And on it, I list every show that's happening on my beat, which is Chicagoland.
I list the shows. I list the opening and closing dates. I color code them based on my level of interest. And then I try and see everything. I mean, I can't see everything, but I try and see as much as I can that I know in advance is going to be of some interest to me. And then I see a lot of shows that I'm never going to write about simply because it's my job to keep up on what's going on and also learn about artists that are new to me that maybe then I'll write about a future show of theirs.
But then there are two places that I write for regularly. One is the Tribune. I write for them monthly. And one is Hyperallergic. I write for them monthly. So the Tribune is a general readership newspaper. And Hyperallergic is a really excellent web-based, web magazine. But it's just right in the art world. I don't think people outside of the art world read it. But it's really a fantastic publication. So I choose the shows I'm going to review differently for each site.
So the Tribune is usually big shows happening in Chicago that I think ought to be of interest to a general readership. So it's not like nitty-gritty, art-specific stuff. Right. More mass appeal. More like a review, so to speak. Well, it's always reviews. I'm not an arts journalist. I'm really strictly an art critic. I only write reviews. You can fit a lot of stuff into a review if you want to. It's a more capacious form than I think people necessarily think it to be.
But yes, mass appeal. Such as I deem it to be so for the Tribune. And then for Hyperallergic, I'm pretty committed to writing almost exclusively about Chicago artists for Hyperallergic. So whatever Chicago artists I think are the most exciting that are having shows in Chicago, I want them to be known outside of Chicago. And Hyperallergic is read internationally. So it's a little bit strategic. I can write about any Chicago artist with or without mass appeal. But I really want them to get broadcast beyond the city in which they're often showing and maybe be read by someone in Berlin or be read by someone in L.A.
or be read by someone in Kathmandu. You're listening to Art on the Air on Lakeshore Public Media 89.1 FM on WVLP 103.1 FM. Yeah, you know, I want to say that also happens with the Tribune because I had an exhibit at my gallery and I got a phone call from somebody in London who had read about the exhibit in the Chicago Tribune. So it got to London. In this day of most of the stuff being published online, I'm a subscriber to things but not in paper form anymore.
I subscribe to things electronically. Any magazine that I want to get now, if I can, I get it electronically. So that gives you a worldwide audience instantly. Like our show can be heard worldwide and actually we do have listenership. Occasionally I'll check the statistics like, oh wow, we're all the way in Indonesia or something like that. So let's go through the process. Like when you go see an art show, what would you exactly kind of write? I know each show is different, but what would you write? Like if I'm a reader, what do I expect to see in that review? Well, I mean this is like what I teach my journalism students, right? When I teach art criticism.
There's all the basic details you have to include. You know, the sort of who, what, where, when. Never mind the why, but the who, what, where, when has to be in there and it has to be in there in some logical kind of place. But then, you know, the why is really the point. Why should you care about this? Why does this matter now? So, you know, I see all kinds of shows that I love, but I don't think that it's important in that moment that I communicate it to a larger audience.
And then depending on the readership I'm writing for, I figure out what else I need to give them in order to fully appreciate this work that I'm writing about. Is there historical context? Is there a news item that's making it really relevant right now? Is it part of a larger contemporary art movement that I want to give them a sense for? Could be any combination of the above. You know, I have a question about that. And it starts with, like, what do you feel about the artist statement? Because for me, that part doesn't matter to me.
I mean, I go into the work and I don't read the artist statement first. I want to have, you know, a visceral experience of the work and come up with my own interpretation. And then maybe at the end, I'll look at the artist statement. How, you know, how do you, what do you feel about that? It depends on the work. Some work does not need an artist statement or any other kind of supportive material. And some work needs it.
And I try and make that judgment call pretty early on when I go and see a show so that I can see it in the best way possible. At the end of the day, I'll make sure that I read everything because that's my job. You know, everything that I could possibly know so that I can write the most informed piece. The viewer, you know, it depends. Some work has really important backstories. And if you don't get that backstory, you're missing something fundamental in the experience of the work.
And other work is just going to get bogged down by text. Yeah, that's exactly what I, that's exactly how I feel about it, too. Like, I do like the backstory, but after I viewed the work, you know, and it does depend on the backstory, too. Some of it is just, it feels like it's just words. Yeah, because sometimes it is, because there's this obligation that's become built into the professionalization of the practice where, you know, in art school, they have to write art statements.
And it's, all the didactics are considered, you know, necessary in museums. But there should be judgment executed, like on the back end, where you really look at the work as the producer of it or the exhibitor of it and think about what does this work need in order to reach its audience? Truly, what does it need? And what doesn't it need? I almost feel that way about titling things, too. I don't want to put a title on things because it leads somebody in a particular direction.
So now I have a completely personal thing that you don't really have to answer if you don't want to. So you've already talked about the pleasure of going to art exhibits. Do you have, so what do you do in your off time? Do you like sumo? Or do you like ping pong or badminton? Or, you know, what else are you passionate about? Right. I mean, I definitely don't go see art in my free time. I go see art in my work time.
I like to plunge year round in Lake Michigan. Oh. Like I'm a cold water swimmer. And then when it's not cold water, my gang that I go out with and I, we just, we swim long distances. We'll swim like, you know, 40 minutes or an hour in the summer as far as we can get and then come back. Oh. Water is my element. I love it. So when you go to see something, and I'm sure when you review something, you don't necessarily want to be negative, but there's sometimes you come across something and say, now maybe you're impression that you personally don't like it, but how do you relate to that? Or do you just not write about something like that? Do you say, oh my gosh, this is really terrible? I can probably count on two hands the number of truly negative reviews that I've written over the years.
And it's because if I'm going to put something really negatively critical in print, it has to be very important. It can't just be, I don't like something or I'm annoyed by something. I have to feel like it's a fundamental problem. And it's a problem also beyond that one body of work. Like it's a larger problem that this work is going to allow me to talk about and that it is, you know, exemplary of. And often it's an institutional problem as opposed to a problem with a particular body of artistic work.
You know, and partly that's it. It's much nicer to punch up than punch down. And like the Art Institute of Chicago can take it, right? They can take whatever I can throw at them and hopefully be all the better for it. But, you know, an emerging artist, like you have to do something that is spectacularly offensive for me to write about you negatively in print. Like I only get to write twice a month also. So, and I'd rather engage with something I'm excited about than something I'm pissed about.
So do you feel part of that might be with an emerging artist instead of slamming them is maybe to encourage them in a direction? I mean, obviously they're the artist and they're the creator, but they're also the artist in your review. Yes. But again, like I only get to write two columns a month. So it's unlikely that I'm going to spend that space or word count on work that I'm not truly excited about. Right. It's really different in the performance project that I do that you mentioned in the intro where all kinds of artists come to me for a short review and there I really feel like it's my job to encourage and direct and contextual like whatever I can do for someone there.
So I'll find the thing that's interesting in their practice and I'll highlight it or I'll make a strong suggestion the way you would in a studio visit. Is this still an ongoing project? Because it's been going on for quite a bit now. Do you still consider it a national and one that is worldwide? I mean, it's primarily national. I've done it twice outside of the country by invitation. I mean, I'll go anywhere to do it. And yes, it's ongoing, but I haven't done it much since the pandemic.
Also, because it's a traveling thing, it's like I have to fit it into my work schedule and my family schedule and it's just it's a little tricky. But it's going to be good for the people I bring it to. I have a quick question about one of the books that you wrote, The New Authentics, Artists of the Post-Jewish Generation. Did you get to choose the artist? Because I have that book. Did you get to choose the artist you wrote about or were the names put in a hat and both of you chose who you were going to talk about? Oh, that's a great question and I'm sure I don't remember.
But I did get to choose the title of the book and I was hired to write half or more of the artist text and I took what I got. I love that Lila Friedland or I think it was Friedland photo of her on the roof like doing her incantation. I love that write-up that you did on her work. Wow, that's like a blast from the past. I don't have to write local catalog essays really anymore because it would be sort of ethically suspect as a local newspaper critic.
So that sort of predates my time at the Tribune, I think. It's like a sticky sort of just in general thing with curators curating shows that their friends might be and it's really, you know. Yes, it's all about ethics and mostly nobody cares with critics unless you write for a newspaper and if you write for a newspaper there is an ethics board and you have to follow their rules which include just the impression of something being unethical.
So I try to be careful. Very good. We just have a couple moments left. We want to give you a chance to tell where people might find you. I know you said earlier you don't have social media but where they can find information about you and give you some free views. Yes. I write monthly for the Chicago Tribune. You can find those articles in the physical paper or on the Tribune's website and I write monthly for Hyperallergic which is free and you can find it at hyperallergic.com And we'll have a link on your picture on our website.
Lori Waxman, art critic for the Chicago Tribune and also senior lecturer for the School of Art Institute in Chicago. Thank you so much for coming on Art on the Air. My pleasure. We'd like to thank our guest this week on Art on the Air, our weekly program covering the arts and arts events throughout northwest Indiana and beyond. Art on the Air is heard Sunday at 7 p.m. on Lakeshore Public Media 89.1 FM also streaming live at lakeshorepublicmedia.org and is available on Lakeshore Public Media's website as a podcast.
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That's aota at breck b-r-e-c-h dot com or contact us through our Facebook page. Your hosts were Larry Breckner and Esther Golden and we invite you back next week for another episode of Art on the Air. Aloha everyone. Have a splendid week. Express yourself you art and show the world your heart. Express yourself you art and show the world your heart. You're in the know with Esther and Larry of Art on the Air today. They're in the know with Larry and Esther of Art on the Air today.
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