“Flirting is all about getting your heart’s desire.”

Burrell is a polished woman, wearing a knee length blue dress with beaded tear-shaped cutouts. Her nails, toenails, and understated bracelet are expertly coordinated. She appears confident and engaging—not too surprising for someone in her profession.

Burrell seems to be a walking embodiment of the characters in her book—young, successful, and armed with a romantic plan. Her novel, “Single Girl Summer,” the impetus for her workshop at Listenbee, is semi-autobiographical. “Single Girl Summer” features a recently divorced woman struggling to find her footing in the dating world. Burrell herself began the story after a painful divorce, and this experience doubtless informed the novel. Like Burrell, the three main characters all have successful careers. One is a lawyer; another owns her own restaurant. Though the novel appears to have more than its fair share of romantic-novel clichés and unrealistic moments, it has an empowering core—strong, successful women, taking control of their emotional and romantic lives.

Many in the crowd at Listenbee last Friday already knew and loved Burrell’s book for this reason; others who wandered into the gallery during the course of their Second Fridays art walks were just hearing of “Single Girl Summer” for the first time. The crowd nodded attentively as they listened to Burrell speak. In the this post-Mad Men era, it may be commonsense that a woman can be successful, independent, and unabashedly flirtatious all at the same time. Still, every now and then it’s nice to have a reminder. This is such stuff as dreams and book tours are made of.

“Natural Selection” features four artists: Jessica Hogberg, Kristen Maniscalco, Grace Scott, and Mark Yee. Although their respective styles vary in medium, texture, and style, all of their works explore ecological themes—a premise powerful enough to make the vibe of the show feel cohesive. Acrylic paintings, ink drawings, and ceramic sculptures create pieces of hazy abstraction and lustrous realism, yet all the works come together under a unifying palette.

The plain white walls and wood floors of the gallery allow colors to shine through the distraction of the evening’s bumping mash-ups and crowd. Shadowy greys, ranging from metallic to clay, merged viscously with feathery greens and blues. Cool shades are so prominent in the works that brighter colors, when they do emerge, are striking. The parallel themes and colors of the artists’ oeuvre are so arresting that it takes a good deal of examination to get to know the character of the individual work of each, to be able to distinguish each artist from another, and to start to understand their distinct purposes and goals.

Hogberg, a young, pretty, tall, and down-to-earth brunette, is concerned with systems—how harmonious, self-contained orders form from the interactions of tiny individual organisms, how even the most minute creature can retain its own unique qualities, but almost become an environment or a landscape when part of a group. This concept of the aggregative clockwork of autonomous living things can be seen throughout her work, in the repetition of donut/bacteria-like shapes in cool greys and teal-greens, each distinctive but contributing to an elegant whole when perusing through her paintings.

Maniscalco is responsible for the exhibition’s intriguing, lifelike, and oft-cryptic ceramic sculptures. She displays bulbous spheres arranged in herd-like formations and a grotesquely realistic and fascinating snake whose head is devouring a human heart and whose body is cut into sections that become maze-like tunnels for mice. Although Maniscalco’s work is perhaps the most impenetrable of the exhibit’s abstract collection, the theme of environmentalism offers a helpful entryway into understanding her pieces. “My work is a reaction to our exponential population increase, and communicates the importance of respectful forethought regarding our natural resources,” she writes in her introduction to her contribution to “Natural Selection.” With this lens, spheres become symbols of subjugated womankind in “Dwindling Matriarchy.” The snake and mice become, perhaps, an emblem of the cyclical and balanced relationships in nature, even between predator and prey.

Scott’s work represents the most diverse and versatile use of media and style of the four artists, with pieces displaying an expertise in both tattoo-style inkings of whales and in glossily surrealistic oil paintings featuring icy landscapes and falling blackbirds. In her introduction to Natural Selection, Scott discusses “integrating the ‘myth’ ” into her work, allowing her to “juxtapose it with the harsh realities of the modern world.” The presence of myth becomes obvious in pieces like “Eden,” an ink print of a female bodied, raven-headed, satyr-footed creature clutching the infamous apple in its beak, a take on the Paradise Lost myth that makes the viewer question the relationship of man and beast and the spiraling after-effects of human nature on nature in general.

Finally, Mark Yee is a stylish and polished ex-financier who makes larger-than-life, cloudy, abstract paintings in mixtures of acrylics, chalk, and oils. His hilly, three-dimensional pieces are reminiscent of landscapes. Like Hogberg, his inspiration comes from the synthesis of “energy and rest, peace and strife, yin and yang.” These notions can coexist “simultaneously in natural phenomena,” he writes on Black Cloud’s website. Simultaneity is visible in works like “Piece 57,” where primordial mists are at the same time flat and highly textured, colorful, and cool—as if each painting coincidentally captures an instant and eon within the borders of its canvas.

Black Cloud Gallery, 1909 S. Halsted St. Through May 30. Monday ,10am-3pm; Wednesday, 11am-6pm. Free. (773) 678 3950. blackcloudgallery.net

So begin the simple directives, shared with the audience members, that guide the stone-faced, barefooted women standing against a minimalist backdrop of ROOMS, a small standalone gallery in Pilsen. Todd and Marrakesh Frugia’s one-night-only performance art piece, “Songs From the Sea of Boths,” came on a warm, inviting evening as gallery-goers streamed along S. Halsted for Second Fridays. During the three-hour period of the show, the women stood in the gallery ringing their chimes as viewers came and went, staying as long or as short a period as they liked.

After turning into the narrow entryway, an unobtrusive white door with a sign asking for viewers to “please enter quietly” opens,  inviting the sounds of the delicate, penetrating chimes and the slow, rhythmic steps of the twelve women. They stand straight-backed, arms raised, the thin silver chimes clasped in their hands and dangling from their wrists, forming angular, geometric traces against the bare white canvas of their simple sleeveless dresses.

The chimes ring out without pattern, as some of the women stand statue-still and others slowly lift an arm to ring a chime. A few women put down their arms and speak: “Each of their own,” they say, following a prescribed script, turning to either the left or the right. “Sometimes one. Sometimes the other,” they continue, stepping according to the instructions.

“We’ve been dealing a lot with sort of random patterns and rules,” Frugia says, describing the piece as a game of sorts for the performers. They can strike one of their chimes, or turn left or right, but can only take a limited number of steps. Drawing from a theatrical and literary background, the artists had given the performers a specific script to follow as they lower their arms and turn.            Frugia says that audience reaction has varied widely, alternately describing the performance as marionette-like, mechanical, or like a sea. “We’re giving a fertile soil for art to grow,” Frugia says, likening the process to a farmer throwing seeds onto a field, not knowing exactly what will sprout. “There’s always someone who just walks in, looks at the piece, and their face just kind of gets stuck…That’s the audience member I’m going for, that person that gets mesmerized or trapped.”

Originally, the piece was commissioned for a wedding, Frugia says—something that was unique in their artistic experience. “We wanted a piece that was about two things that were coming together,” she explained. The “Boths,” then, refer to the two chimes on the wrists of the performers: “through the actor, [the separate chimes] become a both.”

Furthermore, he is interested in the effort driving the choices that the women make. They must hold their arms up throughout the performance, save for the very strict stipulations set in the script. They can ring either chime, as long as each chime is allowed to fully ring out before ringing another. The instructions provide for the inevitable tiring of their arms by allowing them to be lowered when a performer wants to recite the script.

Marrakesh and Frugia drew performers from their theater friends and from connections with actors and models, as well as from regulars who see their pieces and ask to participate—those curious to know what it would be like to stand and ring a bell for three hours. “We do these long, endurance-driven shows,” he says.  “The piece is for them just as much for the audience.”

The women move in the space as if in a dream, the gentle rings and the low murmur of their voices creating a slight hum in the air, as their bare feet pad slowly, methodically, across the floor. The white of their dresses almost glows, and the movement and non-movement of their bodies form an eerie spontaneous choreography. “But a single both in a sea of boths,” they say. “What music.”

835 S. Halsted St. Hours by appointment. (312)733-1356. chicagoartsdistrict.org

Claire Withycombe

Eerie, watery chants sung by a chorus of female voices echo out onto the street in a quiet residential block. The ebb and flow of the music pulls the curious pedestrian into the set of open doors and through to the back of a modest gallery, where black-and-white vintage footage of young female gymnasts flits on a small screen. Their bodies glide, somersault, leap, and twirl forwards, backwards, and around in a series of roughly cut and rewound frames to the haunting movements of the music. “Collective Magnetism,” by Sara Mosk, is an appropriate introduction to “Black Arts,” both for the magnetic pull of its sounds and images, and for its place in the collective spirit of this group exhibit at Pilsen’s Roxaboxen Minicastle.

At first, the feeling in the gallery suggests the sensation of hearing lonely footsteps on an empty Pilsen street: a few viewers mosey around the two open rooms, and the disjointed creepiness of the individual works dictates the mood. A striking duo of sketches of prone women’s bodies by Jenny Kendler hangs on the front right. The top image, entitled “Oh, Give Me a Home,” features buffalo thundering across a woman’s back. In the sketch below, entitled “Sibling Rivalry (Love Bites),” another woman is mounted by a furry animal. Glance to the left, and a drawing depicts soft grey lines wriggling across sketch paper like the shadowy traces of charcoal worms. A shroud covering an elliptical form resting in a metal frame points across the space toward a giant paisley plume, rendered in black upholstery with touches of orange and sapphire.

As the night goes on, the tiny space fills with a crowd of exuberant folk, and lively conversations bubble to the surface. A woman in a pink wig and heavy makeup saunters up to a college kid in black cargo pants. They hit it off and start chatting about the work in front of them: a piece by Alex Chitty, a burnt six-foot ladder situated between a sketch of dismantled cougar skin and a photograph of a mouthless mask superimposed on a satin curtain.

In assembling the exhibit, curator Liz McCarthy drew from her personal network of female artists, looking for “icons of the individual [artist]” she had in mind. Some pieces were created for the exhibit, but most were personally selected by McCarthy from each artist’s extant oeuvre. All but one of the fourteen artists are based in Chicago. McCarthy sought to gather different individuals’ takes on an archetype widely explored and exploited in human history through folklore—that of the “strong, independent female outcast from…daily life,” she says.

Walking through the exhibit, McCarthy explains the structure of the exhibition space as a transition between two major manifestations of artistic work: formal “approaches to making images,” such as watercolors and photographs situated in frames, and less formal work that reflects ideas of environment and embodiment in more abstract or unconventional media. Traces of the two themes present themselves in different regions of the space, but the human body is of central concern at the front (with the Kendler pieces, and other works that use the image of the human body), while moving through the exhibit, “the body becoming environment” comes to the fore. This second idea is exemplified in a sculpture that manipulates objects of interior environments and challenges notions of females as vessels of content domesticity: Chitty’s ladder, despite reaching to some higher goal, is burnt to a crisp; a work by Melissa Damasauskas entitled “Powers That Be”—a chair snaked in masses of velveteen black ribbons—is shoved up against a doorknob. McCarthy describes the progression of the exhibit as a “buildup” which seems to culminate in the hypnotic footage “Collective Magnetism.”

The choice to run the exhibit during the spring, according to McCarthy, dovetails with the traditional associations of fertility with the season—and by extension, of the fertile with the feminine. A nearly exclusive use of black and white in each of the pieces references the notion that this fertility springs from the “dark, rich soil” built up during the burial of organic matter during the winter.

Ultimately, “Black Arts” is worth a visit. The exhibit is united not just by form or by meaning but also organically and communally, by the biological femaleness shared by the artists themselves and by the supportive structure of the exhibit’s origins. While each piece certainly provokes thought individually, the exhibit’s greatest charm is to be experienced in the way those individual pieces act in concert with the others.

Roxaboxen Exhibitions, 2130 W. 21st St. Through June 2. Hours by appointment through roxaboxen.minicastle@gmail.com. Free.

(Meaghan Murphy)

“This is a powerf**k” is an apt tagline for Slow Gallery’s current exhibition. “It ain’t over…” is all about power and how we mess with it—it’s about breaking rules, challenging assumptions, confronting ourselves and our relationship with power of any kind.

In the gallery, there’s a telephone pole lying on the floor. Too big for the stark and white-walled space, it extends into the furnished apartment of the gallery’s director. Separated by a door and an obvious change in décor the two pieces seem separate, making the viewer unsure if both spaces are open or not. After a few tentative looks around, one crosses the threshold to find a lamp post protruding out of the end of the pole, illuminating the apartment’s bed. On one of the gallery’s walls there is a looped video of two men chopping down a tall, bare tree in a misty wooded landscape. On another wall hang two plastic axes, filled with watery fake blood—a powerful statement, indeed. Axes, tree, pole: it’s an obvious connection, but it takes a moment to register.

Slow is a gallery that prides itself on its small shows and its careful pairing of artists, as well as its commitment to a down-to-earth vibe. It’s a place that’s over irony, a Pilsen gallery focused on “frankness.” With this exhibition, there’s definitely a lot of frankness in the room.

At a quick glance, the show’s pieces could appear unrelated and random, but it seems intentional. Slow’s director and curator Paul Hopkin—or as he introduces himself to guests at the opening, simply, “Slow Gallery Paul”—explained that these pieces are about power in a “comically literal way.” It’s so obvious, you might miss it. Body power, phallic power, electrical power, it’s “so stupid to even say it out loud,” he says.

The axes, the telephone pole, and the tree trunk video are all part of a sequence by Brent Garbowski and Joe Mault called, “It’s So Hard to Take What is Mine.” It’s “cyclical,” says Hopkin. “The ax is a way of taking power,” he says, but it’s filled with blood—“The weapon takes its owner’s blood.” Garbowski, a former student of Hopkin’s, mentioned that the original idea for the axes was to use a replica of the axes in the video, but the artists decided that would be too literal and not comedic enough.

Barbara DeGenevieve’s video piece showcases a large nude woman singing jazz standards directly to the camera. Her gaze is as confident as her voice crooning “Fever,” though her voice is almost more naked than her body. Her complete self-assuredness confronts your conceptions of what a naked body and voice should be like—objectified, ashamed, inhibited—without making viewers uncomfortable. It’s a fine line, and both the artist and her model get it right. There’s a power to it, but also a humor. Because of her model’s aplomb and poise, it’s funny when she forgets a bit of the lyrics, not awkward. You’re invited in on the joke, you’re invited to laugh. DeGenevieve’s model is not the traditional subject and her viewer is not the traditional gazer. These traditional lines are effaced, and what’s left is a completely sincere depiction of body and voice.

Hopkin hopes that the show succeeds in conveying a sense of humor beyond the trite and oft-relied upon sense of irony. “I’m very disappointed by irony. I see it as a lazy kind of humor,” he  says. With the curation of this exhibit, it’s clear he wants to find humor within power and the ways we construct it. And he succeeds. There’s something bare and bold to these pieces and their humor. Unencumbered by irony, power is all that’s left.

Slow Gallery, 2153 W. 21st St. Saturdays, 12-5pm. (773)-645-8803. paul-is-slow.info

On the auditorium’s stage on April 17, award-winning poet turned award-winning peace activist Javier Sicilia stood at a plain wooden podium against a stark black backdrop. He spoke directly, without poetry or sentimentality. He read no verse, and only once in passing did he mention the son whose death inspired his activism. Instead, Sicilia, founder of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, spent the hour illuminating the War on Drugs and the devastation it continues to cause for the Mexican people.

“It’s a disgrace that this criminal culture has taken root in the Mexican soul,” he said. The watchword was “patrimonialism,” which Sicilia identified as “a legalized form of Mafia” and the fundamental cause of the violence in Mexico. He traced a tradition of power grabbing and corruption back to Spanish conquest in the 16th century—a precedent, he said, for today’s political climate.

As proof of Mexico’s ineffectual government, he cited a 98 percent level of impunity. “If we were in Mexico and we wanted to kill someone, we could do it,” he said. “We wouldn’t get caught.”

He attributed this laxness in conviction to the army’s wide-ranging control. “[The government] is legitimizing criminals as an army,” he said. “And any army is going to violate human rights, because it’s in a war.”  He called on the US to legalize “soft” drugs—marijuana and opium—and predicted that, if they don’t, the violence will spread north.

Chicagoans signed up in droves to hear Sicilia speak, packing the guest list days before the talk. Though the room ended up only half full, those present were impassioned about the cause. In a time for questions at the end, individuals from the crowd lined up to express support—usually in Spanish—and explain their own opinions and experiences.

One audience member, an ex-Zapatista, shouted, “Tierra y Libertad!”—a slogan from the Mexican revolution meaning “Land and Liberty!” Another woman quietly asked Sicilia for a point of hope, something to hinge her optimism on. He told her that, if anything, people cannot lose themselves in despondency. “We have to believe that love is the foundation of our existence.”

(Jason Huang)

In a flashing red cardigan and a stunning turquoise dress, Victoria Martinez makes her way from one darkly clothed huddle of people to the next at Cobalt Studio in Pilsen. She inflates the atmosphere with new life every time she flashes her rouged smile. This energy is also present in her work—as a whole, it seeks to rejuvenate a jaded city.

Her exhibition, “Other Side Breathing,” is a collection of textile pieces inspired by various sites around Pilsen. Having grown up in Pilsen, Martinez has never forgotten her beginnings. The seven diverse locations she’s selected for her artwork range from a glass-paned door of a taco shop to the rusty gate of an abandoned mall. Together, they recall her childhood memories of walking and talking in packs with her friends along the neighborhood’s streets.

Walking around the exhibit, I was struck by the honest, embroidered passion in each piece. “I want my art to evoke nostalgia, to be eye candy,” says Martinez. “I want people who walk by to stop and appreciate the space around them. I want them to appreciate their land and landscape.”

Martinez’s work is brazen. Brightly colored and roughly stitched, her art doesn’t seek to impress. With materials ranging from scarves and sequins to balloon scraps, place mats, plastic flowers and children’s socks, each piece is a collage of brilliant patterns and jolting hues, inspired by common objects you can find around your home.

“Jackpot at the Mini Mall” patches two different fabrics with a complex pattern of muted browns and spotted swirls stitched on top. She tops it off by attaching balloon scraps, obviously from the Halloween section, to the sides. Another piece, “Authentic Tacos”, seems like a deconstructed Mexican dress with a warm orange patterned rectangular body beneath a rainbow-sequined collar. In the center lies a ring of white plastic flowers. Her pieces are simple yet stunning, both unintimidating and evocative.

Martinez works with textiles, but instead of creating out of expensive fabrics or over-priced materials found in high-end art stores, she focuses on materials either donated or found in thrift stores. “The materials I use can be found in the thrift store down the street. People don’t care about what they throw out, but I see the potential in them,” she says. Martinez shops at the local thrift store and grabs random stuff off the shelf to transform them from forgotten fragments to symbols of renewed life, drawing out connections between the separate components. There is a history behind these items, Martinez tells me, and what enraptures her is the mystery behind them.

Whereas most knits stitching is usually hidden, Martinez allows the thread to remain visible. What may seem like hurried or amateur stitching is part of her effort to make her work accessible. “Some people can be intimidated by something like an art gallery, so that’s why I put my art in the streets. I want to make it as accessible to regular people as possible,” she explains.

“Other Side Breathing” is about a return to a time of a grounded heritage, a time of celebration and festivity through cultural identity. She hopes the art’s embodiment of her personal affair with Pilsen will spark others to remember their own histories. “Other Side Breathing” aims to show the art in the everyday, the memories contained in the things you pass on the street. Ultimately, her own art will return to the street—Once the exhibit in the gallery is over, Martinez will install her art in the seven designated sites that her work draws from, “to rest, live, or disappear.”

As I leave the gallery, I am directed by her final piece, “Forward to 19th Street.” In it, an arrow made of quilts, tablecloth, and other fabric points through the gallery’s open door, out into the city where memories are made and, hopefully, remembered.

Cobalt Studio, 1950 W. 21st St. Through April 30. Hours by appointment. Free. (773)644-1163. cobaltartstudio.blogspot.com

Blumberg attended one of ACRE’s two-week residency programs and completed the exhibition there. “Since I have a full-time job it was really great,” he says, alluding to his current residence in Philadelphia. And while his education has allowed him to be well-travelled—he has studied at SAIC, the Center for Contemporary Kitakyushu in Japan, and Bard’s International Center for Photography—he grew up in the Midwest, and its influence over his work is quite apparent. A large American flag-emblazoned  firework box, fully detonated and spotted with tattered holes, is propped up against one wall. On another are shelved three trophies, one for the Root Toss Champion at the International Horseradish Festival.

Blumberg has an intriguing explanation for one of the other non-photographic components of the exhibition. Framed on one wall is a wrinkled piece of paper covered in stamps from multiple bars and taverns. Titled “RALLY IN THE VALLEY POKER RUN,” it describes the rules for an event that requires its participants to travel to multiple destinations, receive a playing card at each one, and compare hands with other players after they’ve returned to a predetermined meeting place. The sheet of paper is “also a trophy” to the artist because, as he explains, the bartenders at some of the checkpoints acknowledged him as the only Poker Run contestant they’d had all day. “I knew I had been the only one to go to all of them,” Blumberg boasts with a shy smile.

Simulatneously the most befuddling of components in Boys’ Life and the largest image in the collection is a framed faded portrait of George Washington. Without an explanation from Blumberg,it seems startlingly out of place among photographs of men and boys lighting off fireworks, the casualties of a demolition derby, and women washing motorcycles. The artist  describes the portrait as “an homage to working on cars and drinking beer,” since it was taken from a family member’s garage in which both of these activities were commonplace. Underneath the portrait is a shelf on which sits the rusted exhaust manifold of a Chevy engine and a few empty cans of Busch Light. The piece continues to the floor, where more empty of the cans lie in a way that one can only describe as meticulously discarded. The portrait of our first president also symbolizes for Blumberg the “ultimate man,” a powerful and respected figurehead that emphasizes the masculinity of Boys’ Life as a whole.

The photographs, which make up most of Boys’ Life, harness both the precision of modern equipment and the nostalgia of disposable film cameras. Their subjects are colorful and lively, filled with smoke and sparks and bikini-clad women. One photograph, taken from a distance, examines a crowd surrounding a young blonde woman as she straddles a motorcycle. Its focus is unclear, as the woman is not centered although the whole crowd turns toward her. “I’m more interested in the people photographing her,” Blumberg explains as he points to the men and women holding cameras in the picture. He hesitates to call it voyeurism; his unusual interest in the spectators makes Blumberg more a voyeur of voyeurs, which in the world of photography is a refreshing take on a fast-approaching cliché.

On the surface, Adam Blumberg’s Boys’ Life is reminiscent of the “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” mantra. It is a carefully collected assortment of memories and events wherein the explanation of each item’s meaning is key. As a whole, it captures the virility and simplicity of life in the Midwest in a way that successfully supersedes the misogyny and datedness that one has come to expect from Americana. Every item and every subject in Boys’ Life is valued as a testament to the youthful energy and community of the small towns that surround us, inciting a nostalgia that is as universal as it is personal.

Katryce Lassle

What connects the cacophony of a basement punk show with the solidity of geometric shapes? Or a young suburban woman with thick green clouds of smoke? Seductive pastel nudes with gold coins? Matt Maniscalco, Jennifer Cronin, and Ian Mitchell Wallace all manage to harmonize these seemingly disparate concepts in “Embody,” a display of contemporary figure painting at Black Cloud Gallery.

Upon arrival, a quick survey through the window promises a wide spectrum of technique and medium. The gallery’s door is held open by a rolled up pair of baby-sized pants, and, while not part of the show, it seems like a statement on the part of the gallery: all who enter are free to leave grown-up pretensions outside. The exhibit has as much room for whimsy as it does contemplation; at the opening, everyone was smiling and chattering like old friends.

Maniscalco, working in oils, combines the vibrating energy of punk shows with calm, unwavering geometric shapes and nature scenes. He works from photographs taken in the basement of his old house, where his friends’ band often practiced and local punk bands came together to host shows. He offsets these loud and shadowy images by positioning large, brightly colored shapes in their center. Some paintings include images of nature within the shapes, such as the rolling waves of Lake Michigan. “The act of balancing has always intrigued me,” his statement reads. He admits that much of the time he is “experimenting,” attempting to see whether he will eventually tip the scales.

Cronin uses oils to create dream-like pseudo-self portraits reminiscent of fantasy and science fiction movies. The woman in each painting seems to be searching for, or on the brink of discovering, something unknown; the artist’s statement describes it as “an intermingling of worry, mystery, wonder and fear all jumping up and over itself. Was it space? Was it beauty? Was it memory?” One painting shows a woman in profile who stands in jeans and socks in a sparsely furnished room; the entire scene glows pink as the open door she is facing emanates a pink and white light speckled with paint of like colors. In another, the same woman peers up into a closet that emanates an opaque green cloud. “I’ve always been very interested in psychology,” Jennifer says, elaborating that UofI at Champaign would not allow her to triple-major in painting, art education, and psychology as she’d wished.

Wallace’s nudes combine seduction and quirkiness, using watercolor and gold leaf to create mysterious and sensuous portraits with humorous titles like “Da Golden Pedestal.” The artist himself mans the DJ table; he is a small and unassuming blonde whose handle is “Posedown” (after the tie-breaking round of bodybuilding competitions in which contestants strike various poses to show off their muscles). His initial shyness contrasts sharply with the honesty and openness of his models. A recent graduate of Lawrence University, Ian tells me that five of the pieces in his collection were created for his senior exhibition. He explains that this collection juxtaposes gold and nudity to emphasize the alluring qualities of both wealth and sex. One piece, which his statement explains is modeled after Klimt’s “Danae,” recreates this gold-embellished oil painting with watercolor. Most of his collection depicts women, with only one male nude shown—a self-portrait, he informs me, to “make myself vulnerable.”

Dana and Lauren, two of the gallery’s co-owners, inform me that the director of the gallery, Clarke, cannot be in attendance because he is away in New York. But after about an hour, Clarke arrives. He explains that he and Dana opened the gallery after a bad experience buying a painting, hoping to create an atmosphere that would be comfortable for students and art collectors alike. Wallace’s willingness to make himself vulnerable, as well as the familiar interactions between patrons, artists, and owners, are testaments to the fact that they have succeeded in this goal. Grinning and chatting with artists and patrons, Clarke says: “I wouldn’t miss opening night.”

Black Cloud Gallery, 1909 South Halsted. April  1-30; Friday April 13 6PM-10PM, Mondays 10AM-3PM, Wednesdays 11AM-6PM, or by appointment. Free.

Anna Dozor

Walk along 18th Street in Pilsen and you’ll pass taquerías, cafes, clothing shops and liquor stores. But if you turn north at the intersection of 18th and Carpenter Street, the latest installation of Candy Chang’s interactive art piece “Before I Die” lies waiting, asking what you want to do before you die.

The concept is deceptively simple: take a public wall or building, cover it with black chalkboard paint, and spray-paint the phrase “Before I die, I want to _____________.” Then leave some colored chalk, and watch as the blanks (and all available space around them, for that matter) get filled with the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of passersby.

Anna Dozor

According to Chang’s website, the first wall was installed on an abandoned, decaying building in Chang’s New Orleans neighborhood just over a year ago. Intended as an “enlightening way to understand your neighbors and discover what matters most to the people around you,” the piece was embraced by the community and quickly picked up by the national media (The Atlantic called it “one of the most creative community projects ever”). After receiving many requests, Chang, a designer, urban planner, and artist, came up with a toolkit for others hoping to put up their own version in their communities. “Before I Die” has now been installed on more than 12 walls across seven countries, with over 25,000 responses in places as varied as Kazakhstan, Mexico, Portugal, and England.

This particular wall in Pilsen, chosen mostly for its well-trafficked location, smooth surface, and supportive owner, is part of a Chicago-wide incarnation of the project organized primarily by the community arts non-profits Good News Only, based in Edgewater, and the Chicago Urban Art Society, based in Pilsen. Walls are now up in three locations around the city (1101 W. Granville Street in Edgewater, 18th & Carpenter, and 18th & Laflin) and four more have been planned for Wicker Park, Chinatown, Little Village and Dvorak Park.

When I first arrived, the piece on Carpenter had been there for a couple weeks, and it was entirely covered in distressed chalk scribbles. The quotes on the wall ranged from the more serious “Never stop loving my mom” and “Leave a legacy” to jokes like “Find Waldo.” They overlapped one another and were often difficult to make out. Rain and weather had given the entire thing a misty, faded effect. Elizabeth Shank, one of the organizers from Good News Only, was contemplating whether it was time to erase the chalk. Periodically the wall is returned to its original state of blankness, free to be filled once more—emphasizing a troubling part of the piece: its impermanence. The board provides a space for each participant to share his or her dreams, but chalk is so easy to erase.

One woman specifically asked Shank not to rinse away one particular ambition about health care written on the Edgewater wall. Even though she had not penned it herself, she felt so connected she didn’t want to see it gone. And Shank did comment, looking wistfully at the now quite chaotic wall, “I do feel a little bad. We’re asking them to put up their opinions and thoughts” while also knowing that they will soon be gone.

And sure enough, when I returned to the wall for a second visit just hours after the first, the organizers had already wiped it clean. The dreams I had just read and deciphered had been rubbed away. One woman, though, quickly took the opportunity to fill an empty space with her own dream. Only after she wrote it did I realize that I had seen this desire—“to run a marathon”—written in the same handwriting just before. In rewriting her wish, she seemed to try to assure its permanence, even if the chalk wouldn’t.

One positive aspect of the chalk’s transience, though, has been its resilience to the little vandalism the walls have experienced. “There have been some slightly profane drawings,” said Shank, and while she found it discouraging and not in keeping with the spirit of the piece, she was able to shake it off: “At least it’s only in chalk.”

Before I Die Chi can be found at the intersections of 18th and Catepillar, and 18th and Laflin