West-side blues is characterized by an aggressive guitar attack punctuated by busy, complex chording between the lead phrases and propelled by a strongly driving rhythm section of bass and drums. Otis Rush took this raw, elemental sound and brought it to new heights in the late 50s with classics like “Double Trouble,” “Groaning the Blues,” […]
Category: Arts & Culture
Posted inArts & Culture
Art Facts: creative bookmaker seeks attractive mail
Last fall, Barbara Lazarus Metz put out a call for mail art. The response has filled the window of Chicago Book Works with an array of postcards, foldouts, altered envelopes, rubber-stamped messages, and other objects having one thing in common: they were sent through the mail. Metz, founder and director of Artists Book Works, says, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Wind in the Willows
THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS Bailiwick Repertory In the bestial microcosm of Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows, the highest praise an animal can receive is that it is “sensible.” A good, solid English quality like overcooked roast beef, reasonableness based on clearheaded good sense is just what characterizes the gruff Badger, resourceful Rat, and […]
Posted inArts & Culture
On Exhibit: the sophisticated naivete of Gaston Chaissac
It was a sad life for first-rate painter Gaston Chaissac. On August 13, 1910, in Avallon, France, he was born to parents who soon divorced. A failure at school, his hopes of entering the cavalry squashed, he worked as a cobbler, cook’s boy, and saddle maker. The death of his mother in 1937 prompted him […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Market Segments
DEALING Northlight Theatre The Organic Theater under Stuart Gordon had enormous success with its series of slice-of-life plays that blended drama with documentary detail. Gordon and his actors conducted Wrigley Field field trips to research die-hard Cubs fans for Bleacher Bums, and haunted local emergency rooms for E/R. The joke was they’d just keep going […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Reading: When Words Collide
For Christmas this year my wife presented me with a beautiful baby boy, a happy event that has nevertheless plunged my life into chaos and disorder. Luckily for me, she bought me another gift that had a quite opposite effect: Joseph T. Shipley’s The Origins of English Words: A Discursive Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. For […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Sharp Claws
Lillian Hellman’s portrait of a family with predation in its blood
Posted inArts & Culture
Boutique of the Week
I can’t even tell you how many times people have asked me, “When is Zara coming to Chicago?” The massive Spanish retailer is beloved by budget-minded style hunters for its dedication to cosmopolitan style and up-to-the-last-second mimicking of street trends—designs can hit the stores just two weeks off the drawing board. And now I can […]
Posted inArts & Culture
What Are You Wearing?
The Collector Mel Racho, 27, is a video artist who teaches motion graphics at Columbia College and Web-site construction at After School Matters. She lives in Logan Square. Tell me about your outfit. I’m wearing capri pants for a really tall woman, but they are regular-length jeans on me. My bow tie… I teach at […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chicago Classics: A Springtime Sampler of Urban Architecture
Photographs by Brady Shea and Betsy Walsh Scratch a Chicago and, if he doesn’t scratch you back or spit in your eye, he’ll probably tell you he’s got this love affair going with the city’s architecture. There’s a strange romance in this town that’s developed around buildings, and it makes a kind of sense, given […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A Day in the Life of the Mind: Part Three
Since Chicago’s greatest theatrical event went unnoticed by the Jefferson Awards Committee, we take this opportunity to commemorate it: It all began, of course, in the swarming imagination beneath the frizzy red hair of Sally Banes. It began to take on a definite shape one day in January when Frank Gruber, the photographer, met Sally […]