Chicago Hauntings

Opening this weekend at Gallery 400, Ghost Nature focuses on mankind’s desire to connect with the natural world. However, the artwork tends to be more bizarre than majestic. The pieces range from a bee trap that uses blue paint as bait, to documentation of a human-to-horse blood transfusion, questioning how healthy our love of nature is to begin with. (January 17–March 1; Tuesday–Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday from noon to 6 p.m. Admission is free.) Photo: Milan Metthey’s “Love Ducking – Experiment 1”

The owners of Paperish Mess just want to make art accessible to their Ukrainian Village neighbors—and maybe grab a beer with an outgoing artist or two. When Lisa Muscato and her high-school sweetheart, Sean Murty, were canvassing Chicago for a space to open their art gallery, they were shown a Ukrainian Village storefront that had previously been used for that same purpose. It had since been cleared out, but the hardwood floors and stark-white walls still hinted at exhibition-space minimalism. One piece, however, had been left behind—a mixed-media painting by local artist Shawn Stucky, whom Lisa and Sean had admired for years. “We’ve been fans of his since I was actually living in Buffalo,” Lisa said. “So we knew when we saw the space that it was meant to be.” In Lisa and Sean’s hands, that nearly empty property has been transformed into Paperish Mess (1955 W. Chicago Ave.), a boutique gallery focused on the work of Chicago artists and artisans. For the couple, opening their own gallery has been the culmination of a dream they’d had since they were teenagers in upstate New York. BRINGING HOMETOWN INSPIRATION TO A NEW CITY Lisa’s love of local had been instilled in her back in Buffalo. There, she worked at Anna Grace, a shop that curates independent-label clothing and regularly hosts local artists. “The owner…was involved with the community, and she really revitalized an entire block,” Lisa said. “There was something really amazing and unique about that.” In that spirit, Lisa and Sean take joy in connecting with local artists. They continue to show Stucky’s work, of course, and have introduced others such as woodblock printer Ilyana Schwartz. When asked, Lisa not only gushes about Schwartz’s work, but about her personality as well. “[She] is fantastic. I love when I meet someone through the gallery and I’m like, ‘I would totally hang out with you!’ Everyone that we work with has been amazing—people you would actually want to go get a beer with.” CONNECTING TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD It’s not just their artists whom Lisa and Sean are clamoring to have a beer with. Through monthly exhibit openings, they’re regularly inviting neighbors into the gallery to sip craft brews while viewing the art. These openings often incorporate other artistic elements, such as live music and film screenings. They even hosted an app release party for Buy Art Not People, a Chicago group that creates art to raise awareness about human trafficking. But even on a regular day, Lisa and Sean are cultivating an open-door reputation. They can often be found welcoming guests like they’re old friends as their cat, Mishka, noses around the gallery quietly. Those too-cool white walls they found when they moved in have since been warmed by reclaimed wood furniture and fixtures handcrafted by Sean. “It could have the white walls if we wanted it to,” Lisa said. “[But instead] it’s just a fun hangout atmosphere…We’re not pretentious people. I don’t think I could ever intentionally have that vibe.” FINE ART + HANDMADE WARES Of course, fine art is only half of what Lisa and Sean have here. Their two-room gallery has the exhibits in the back, but up front, there are displays showcasing handmade goods from more than 100 independent artisans. What they’ve curated blends seamlessly with the art, as with iamhome’s reclaimed-wood wall fences. They collect wood from old family barns that have been torn down, and paint the pieces into neon-colored art. Much of their jewelry has aspects of fine art as well, such as Love, Mia’s gemstone earrings and necklaces. “Everything goes through a gradient, back and forth,” Lisa said. “[For example, we’ll] have a person who does illustrations, and screenprints them on pouches, cards, and prints.” A MORE INTERACTIVE FUTURE As Lisa and Sean strive to make their gallery an engaging and interactive space, they’re intrigued by giving patrons the opportunity to make something of their own. In the past, they’ve hosted printmaking demonstrations by Hoofprint and pie tastings with local bakers, and hope to evolve toward true workshops in the future. “I think it would be amazing to do art workshops,” Lisa said. She cites papermaking as an example, saying that it could help people become “more invested in the process of how art is made, to make it even more approachable.”  Photo: second from top, Miguel Guzman; second from bottom, Kevin Gross; top and bottom, Adam Alexander

Much of the artwork on display in the National Veterans Art Museum’s exhibit Esprit de Corps feels incomplete. That’s not to say that a piece like Benjamin Suarez’s dark Self Portrait - The Vietnam Vet is merely a work in progress. Rather, it’s to acknowledge the raw, unsettled sense of urgency engendered by a work like Suarez’s, which the artist returned to time and time again between 1974 and 1989. Elsewhere in the gallery, Jerry Frech’s four Iraq war journals exhibit a similarly unpolished aesthetic. The partial sketches from his soldier days are overlaid with notes the MFA student scrawled in bright-red ink just months ago. Esprit de Corps opened November 11, and its name translates to “spirit of the body.” This is a phrase used often in the military to describe troop morale, but in this context it refers to the inner spirit that veterans draw on to cope with the lingering traumas of war. Visual art gives them a language through which they can address these traumas and help others understand their experiences. It’s not an easy task, which is why the NVAM staff celebrates each work in the gallery as a feat of “creative resilience.” “Too often, we focus on the negative and forget that so many of the veterans who come home are strong, extraordinary, resilient human beings,” says Communications Coordinator Sarah Eilefson. Of the nine artists featured, five are Vietnam veterans, four are post-9/11 veterans, and all are survivors of trauma. But instead of dwelling on the horrors of war, Esprit de Corps celebrates the artists’ ability “to grow beyond what they’ve experienced,” explains Gallery Coordinator Destinee Oitzinger. The exhibit walks visitors through each artist’s story in three stages. The first features works made while the artists were abroad on duty. This is perhaps the most visceral stage, as the rawness of a work such as Joe Fornelli’s Going Home Early suggests. Painted with coffee, the Vietnam-era piece depicts a fallen service member on a stretcher. Frech’s aforementioned Iraq journals sit just below this display, and the two works together function as a blurry snapshot of life in the throes of war. The second stage features works that the artists made to help process their experiences upon returning home. It’s here that visitors will find Suarez’s haunting self portrait, as well as a Theodore Gostas painting that depicts the most frightening moment of his five-year POW internment in Vietnam. The painting positions the viewer—as well as Gostas himself—outside the experience. Creating a new perspective from which to process an experience is the essential mission of therapeutic art, and it’s clear that this is what Gostas is after in his work. After the exhibit’s first two stages open up a dialogue with viewers, the third gives them a chance to speak. It begins with a piece from Peter Sullivan’s REhumanizaton series. A mirrored surface forces the viewer to confront his or her own image while reading the words “I love you,” scribbled over and over again on paper handmade from Sullivan’s National Guard uniform. The challenges of reintegration are brought home in Air Force veteran Erica Slone’s installation, which features photographs of Slone’s family and hometown overlayed with photographs from her six years in service. Slone plans to be present in the gallery as much as possible, adding to the piece as she engages in conversation with visitors. “I want to learn from them,” she says. “They’re going to affect my work, even by walking around.” For veterans and their families, Eilefson hopes the exhibit will continue a dialogue even after they’ve left the museum. “[I hear] two common refrains,” she says. “The first comes from veterans who say, ‘I never knew that anyone else felt the way that I did’…and the second [comes] from [family members] who say ‘Now I understand why we weren’t talking about it.’” The prospect of building these connections is what drives Esprit de Corps, as well as NVAM’s recently launched therapeutic art program. In addition to inviting veterans and their families to organized workshops, the museum sends veterans into some of Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods to teach art to children. These kids “haven’t seen combat proper, but they’ve seen some tough things,” Eilefson says. This program will put them “in dialogue with someone who can understand what they’ve seen.” Esprit de Corps will be on display at the National Veterans Art Museum (4041 N. Milwaukee) through August 14, 2014. Performances of Veterans’ Voices, a play by Erasing the Distance, will accompany the exhibit November 11­–13 and 18­–20 at 7:30 p.m. in the museum’s Filament Theatre. Photo: © Timothy Burkhart, Groupon; Artwork courtesy of National Veteran's Art Museum