Karl Wirsum’s retrospective at the Chicago Cultural Center is a culmination of forty years of creative expression by a man professionally known as an Imagist, a painter who has worked with a wide range of media, and a graphic artist who uses vivid colors, gestures, and symbology to bring his cartoon-like figures to life.

Lanny Silverman, the curator of the retrospective, has said, “Imagist Art is the reverence for sources of inspiration rather than the irony of Pop Art.” The Chicago Imagists, of which Wirsum was a member, consisted of a group of artists with similar styles who exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center in the late 1960s. Their seminal work was the antithesis of the urban Pop Art promulgated by New York artists at the time. Known for their grotesque images, surrealism, blue collar sensitivities, and even coarseness and vulgarity, the Imagists represented a new vanguard of “down-to-earth” artists showing reverence for all things that inspired them.
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Technorati Tags: Chicago Cultural Center, Pop Art, Chicago Imagists, Pop Art

I was mystified by the huge increase in our ComEd January bill — an increase of 62% in the unit cost per kilowatt-hour. Ten years ago, we all agreed to a rate freeze with the caveat that rates eventually would be based on competition after that time, but we were also told that deregulation would benefit us. We were told deregulation would mean lower rates for us as consumers of electricity and would improve our country’s competitiveness. But has it?
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Technorati Tags: ComEd, rate freeze, deregulation

You probably felt like you had been hit by a freight train this past weekend at Artropolis with so much art work available, but a must see is Gisela Insuaste’s Cuando Llegare at Bucket Rider Galley in the west loop. Insuaste’s new work will give you a moment to rest. Make sure you spend some time with this installation.

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Art Chicago 2007 was an heroic comeback for the Chicago art world. Three stunning abstract painters, who showed unhibited strength, were Larry Poons, Pia Fries, and Jim Lutes. The sheer magnitude of painting at Art Chicago 2007 triumphs the language of art and assures us that abstraction is as strong as the traditional use of oil paint in the history of painting, even today in our contemporary art world!

Technorati Tags: Art Chicago, Chicago art, abstract painters, oil paint, contemporary art

I interviewed Anna Jóelsdóttir in her studio a few weeks ago. She’s an artist who skillfully transforms her thoughts about the dualities in her life into abstract expressions on canvas. Born and raised in Iceland, Anna moved with her husband to Chicago in 1992, completed her MFA at SAIC in 2002, and has since shown with Stux Gallery in New York and Zg Gallery in Chicago. Her acrylic and ink paintings depict free-flowing geometric planes entangled with sprouting organic structures of incredible complexity.

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Technorati Tags: abstract expressions