ArtStyle will be presenting a weekly art series throughout the summer on the participating Cool Globe Exhibit artists. In this first series, we feature Ingrid Albrecht’s Green Roof Connection, Jonathan Franklin’s Garden Variety, and Jill King’s Electrified Earth. All images are provided courtesy of the artists unless otherwise noted.

Ingrid Albrecht

Background: Teacher at Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Art, Chicago (12 years) and at Northwestern University Norris Center (3 years). Workshop and exhibition producer. Graduate degrees in Remedial Reading/Teaching; Fine Art degree. Website: www.ingridsoriginals.com

The Green Roof Connection. Located just south of Balboa and Lake Shore Drive along the lakefront walkway. Globe #94. Sponsor: Kirkland & Ellis.

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Technorati Tags: Cool Globe Exhibit, Green Roof

In keeping with our “blog + magazine + encyclopedia or blog-zine-pedia” concept, we now have a new section on ArtStyle called Reference (see Tab at the top). Initially, Reference will include:
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Michael Pajon, printmaker and collage artist, depicts images and stories with Southern gothic themes, folklore, and Americana in his dreamlike etchings and collages. His etchings are filled with gothic archetypes and symbolism, literally snapshots of people living their everyday lives in small towns, immersed in their superstitions, supernatural beliefs, and cultural and moral baggage.

Lost and Found. Courtesy of the Artist.

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Doesn’t this sound like a familiar scenario: once you finally decide to go to the opera, the sky opens up and pours rain, and suddenly what you decided to be a great outfit for the evening doesn’t seem appropriate any more? This was exactly the beginning of my “Night at the Opera” a few Tuesdays ago when I even cancelled the last few hours of my work just to be able to enjoy the evening with my friend Olga. Nevertheless, even the bad outfit (bad for the weather, of course) couldn’t ruin the event. It was quite unexpected that I decided to go to Bela Bartok’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and Arnold Schoenberg’s Erwartung. Chicago Opera Theater offered the double bill Tales from the Dark Side as two one-act operas concerning extreme relationships and the consequences of betrayal and distrust.

Bela Bartok, 1927

The main actors of the Duke Bluebeard’s Castle (1911) are Duke Bluebeard portrayed by the most recorded bass in history, legendary Samuel Ramey, and his younger, but not any less great, Hungarian-Canadian colleague, mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabo as Judith. Interestingly enough, this opera was performed in Hungarian, which gave zest to an already exquisite and intriguing story. Both Ramey and Szabo were extraordinary in their roles, with Szabo sometimes fighting with the loud brass (like Don Quixote and the windmills), however, not because of her inability to produce, but because of the composer’s arrangement.
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Technorati Tags: Night at the Opera, Bartok, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, Schoenberg, Erwartung, Chicago Opera Theater, Samuel Ramey, Krisztina Szabo

Mia Capodilupo, a Chicago based artist, creates large-scale installations with felt, fiber, yarn, and found and cast-plastic materials. Her current installation, Garden of Eden, is located in the window of Art on Armitage and can be viewed 24 hours a day through June 30th.

She first moved to Chicago to attend the University of Chicago for her undergraduate studies, relocated to Boston for a while, and then lived in San Francisco while doing her graduate studies at the San Francisco Art Institute. While she has always been interested in the use of materials and creating large-scale works, in graduate school, she focused more on concepts rather than materials and processes. In San Francisco, she was confined to a small space, where she continued to make large-scale works but out of smaller assembled pieces. Moving back to Chicago and being a Chicago-based artist has afforded her the space to make large-scale installations out of her casting and fiber materials. The work on Armitage is a fanciful world of green folly, where tiny spiked-like plants root up from the ground and a couple of large “plants” hang from the walls.

Technorati Tags: installation, fiber materials