It is dead!

You hit it on the head. That’s all ATC was…a big party. There is nothing wrong with that but if we are talking about the art a lot and I mean a lot was never worth a damn.

ATC and Wicker Park was destroyed by the grasping rich. In those years it was studio after studio all open house. Artists did sell art. We partied all night. It was fun, we thought we were as good as New York! Then somebody decided to curate, what a mistake. Curators and galleries have no clue.

I was the guy giving away NOT ART stickers. Most people still do not get it.

Putting together a festival covering so many art forms at so many venues, on a non-profit budget with mainly volunteer help requires talent, time and dedication. Whatever happens with Coyote, Chicago is lucky to have folks like Allison Stites, Jessica Cochran and the many others, including some really great volunteers, who pulled it off.

Chicago does have a vibrant scene for young artists. There are plenty of alternative gallery spaces available. Unfortunately, it’s artists showing to other artists and their friends. It’s more of a social scene. For most of these artists, I suspect that after a couple of years, the pressures from life events and day careers force these artists out of the art world.

What Chicago needs is a scene that supports mid-career artists; something that the young artists can graduate into, rather than fall off; something more than cafe shows and ATC/CAC-style events. Chicago needs more interest in its own art from people outside of the field of art making and exhibiting.

Artist community events are also a bomb: http://neotericart.com/2009/08/26/wtf-community-art/

I think one of Chicago’s problem is that it pays too much attention to young artists. The West Loop scene gets most of the attention and that scene is all about “youth”. Apartment galleries, Pilsen, ThreeWalls, etc…it’s all about the “youth”. Before it closed recently, The Contemporary Art Workshop only showed young artists. Any artist that is in an MFA program in Chicago thinks that “they have made it” already. And the sad part about all this is that a lot of this art that I see is complete shit. What is “cutting edge”?…bullshit pseudo intellectual charged statements to go along with shitty drawings pinned to a wall…

You talk about “dinosaurs”. In Chicago, if you are in your mid 30s you are a “dinosaur”….!!!. Actually, using the term “dinosaur” to describe anyone is wrong. And that’s another problem with Chicago, they “forget” about their more seasoned artists. There are plenty of artists over 35 still working in Chicago, still making “good” stuff who never see the light of day in Chicago…they go elsewhere to to be seen.

I am all for “cutting edge” art done the right way. The artworld needs it! And Chicago is paying enough attention to this. What I think would make Chicago stronger would be to pay more attention to its lost “dinoauars”!

This last time i volunteered, Fall of 2009, was curated so badly and so cheaply it was straight up disrespectful to the artists that step up their games invariably while the curators invariably slacked, blaming their poor, poor “budgets” and the bad economy on their shoddy event coordinating. If you’re curators, be creative and find a way to throw a good show or don’t bother at all. It’s just depressing to the rest of us.

I’m a very experienced and educated modern artist and modern art enthusiast with a Bachelors degree in Art and Design from Columbia. Since curating is my optimum goal in life, it is my belief that this city needs to invest in youth again. We’ve been on a consistent decline since 2000. I BELIEVE in modern art and that modern art and fresh ideas is pivotal to making this midwestern city from turning us into another Detroit or Kansas City. I know what Chicago is capable of — what happened to our art scene, people?

I’ve worked for and volunteered for 15 different galleries and art community efforts throughout Chicago, designed art festival brochures for neighboring communities, assisted in art auctions houses, represented a River North Gallery (will remain unnamed) for exhibits at S.O.F.A., Merchandise Mart, Bridge Art Fair and many, many installations for other galleries in the last 5 years alone.
I’m a world traveler that has had the luxury to contrast and compare what other cities are doing for their art communities and unlike Chicago they seem to care: Phoenix, Melbourne, AUS, New York, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Portland, Toronto, Seoul just naming a few on how they nurture their young, budding artists. They offer free monthly trolleys riding you from one gallery to the next, including free entry to their modern art museums that offer a variety of entertainment for the young, old as well as families. You should see their well designed fliers and easy to follow routes to get from one gallery to the next — crowds in the thousands EVERY SINGLE MONTH and growing constantly!!! They offer such variety: incentives such as free art raffles, dance performances, and fun for kids like puppet shows, cultural hoopla’s and tours through their historical districts. ALL FOR FREE every month, all in one evening. They’re keeping their cities art enthusiasts coming back for more all the time and increasing population in the long run regardless of the loom of our bleak economy which seems to be the consistent excuse for why Chicago has been nose-diving. Keep your city happy and investors and money and business will follow.

I can’t believe that out of the 6 gallery districts Chicago has to offer not 1 of them can get it right much less listen to how other cities are thriving artistically. I mean really, do you enjoy bringing in zero profits monthly, gallery owners? I’d say 85% of other major cities art organizations leave Chicago’s gallery scenes in the dust.
The Around the Coyote events have been consistently getting cheaper quality-wise, less coordinated. The standards of the events have predictably been getting worst while the artists they’ve showed (the artists have to pay booth fees to show their work in a 5″ X 5″ space, too) have been consistantly getting more and more incredible.

I want the roster of the artists that showed at that last ATC festival 2009, for i need to start my own permanent gallery in Chicago and show America what we’re capable again. My huge venue will be focusing on modern art and talented youth. They deserve it. We ARE that good.

Every one that works for Around the Coyote are all unpaid volunteers anyway, and they obviously don’t care, much less know how to run a public art festival. The ATC venue I was in working in specifically, on Milwaukee Ave in Wicker Park in 2009, had leaky cielings (water falling on artwork), was filthy, the bathroom was beyond rogue, tiles falling from the cieling, yellow stained walls and empty beer bottles on the floor from the party that was held there the night before. The store front itself looked like an abandoned shabby, broke down free health clinic. A disgrace.

Charge for entry to get in the half ass thrown event, a fee for groups that had taken a bus from Iowa to witness what Chicago modern art has to offer, made me feel acquired. Half the other participating ATC venues involved weren’t even open on time, probably because the unpaid volunteers for ATC were severly hung over from the ATC party thrown the night before – and there was a fee even to get into that. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

As a person that’s in their 30′s and seeks cutting edge art done the right way, as a Chicagoan that’s sick of the stuffy, exorbitantly over priced art created by dinosaurs and owned by dinosaurs (I’m pointing in your direction, River North) ATC deserves to die. They’ve lost their vision and focus on don’t care what quality artwork and curating means.