Will Quam found his love of bricks by accident. While working as an itinerant theater teacher in Chicago, he would travel around the city for work, and as he traveled, he started to notice Chicago’s bricks. “Before 2016 if you’d have asked me what a brick looks like, I would have said, ‘red,’ and I […]
Author Archives: S. Nicole Lane
Posted inFilm
Geoffrey Baer finds ‘gems all over Chicagoland’
Emmy Award-winning host and producer Geoffrey Baer takes folks on an adventure in a program premiering Tuesday, March 7, at 7 PM on WTTW called The Most Beautiful Places in Chicago.
Posted inFilm
Chicago’s 90-year-old film treasure
The nation’s oldest and longest-running college film society is located right under our noses on Chicago’s south side at the University of Chicago.
Posted inArts & Culture
Down the stairs and into “Dreams & Delusions”
“Not touching but joined in astonishment as two cuts lie parallel in the same flesh,” writes Anne Carson in the 1998 novel, Autobiography of Red. Breathing new life, ripping parts apart—it’s the painful, heart-wrenching reality of being alive, of being absolutely anything at all. This is the work of Finnish artist Kristoffer Ala-Ketola, whose first […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The body in focus
While living alone in the woods of northern California at the start of 2020, Lilli Carré started learning chess. Like many folks deep into the pandemic, she took up a new hobby. While trying to draw inspiration for her work, she incorporated her new vehicle for communication when all touch and connection were lost. Carré’s […]
Posted inFilm
The 17th annual porn film festival is back in person
The long-running porn festival HUMP! Fest (organized by Chicago Reader sex columnist Dan Savage) made its way to the Music Box last weekend after being canceled last year.
Posted inArts & Culture
Are neon signs really enough?
There’s a young person smiling, posing—hand on their hip—in front of a lit-up sign that reads: “EMPOWER WOMEN.” It intermittently flashes to include ED, making it “EMPOWERED.” The photo is snapped, the couple walks on. I’ve just entered Andrea Bowers’s retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Since the 90s, Bowers has been making […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Get on Your Knees is about more than your average blow job
There’s more to fellatio than just a climax. It’s absolutely frightening, holding something that fragile in between your teeth, and hoping, wishing, praying that you’re perfecting the act— the duty of the illustrious blow job. Comedian and author Jacqueline Novak dives right into those anxieties in her one-woman show, Get on Your Knees. The salaciousness, […]
Posted inArt Review
Between the flesh and the machine
Skin and stone, organic and sterile, hard and soft: juxtapositions aren’t new in art. This push-and-pull tactic has been done, and done again, but it’s not always executed well. New York-based artist Hannah Levy manages to push and pull her viewers in the right direction for her new solo exhibition, “Hannah Levy: Surplus Tension,” now […]
Posted inCity Life
Where the water flows
About a month ago, I saw a magnet being hurled over the 18th Street Bridge. Initially, I brushed it off and I continued to stroll along the Chicago River bank with my friends. But the sound of the splash carried some weight, like an anchor or rock colliding with the water. I expected the line […]
Posted inArts & Culture
An examination of the self and of others
The new art space, Juliet Art House, introduces the work of Rebecca Baruc.
Posted inArts & Culture
Tiger Strikes Asteroid comes together in ‘It feels like the first time’
And the massive survey of artists does it well.
Posted inArts & Culture
Unionizing to keep the Experimental Station community alive
Workers at the pioneering south side space organize against unfair labor practices.
Posted inCity Life
Painful sex shouldn’t be a mystery condition
This common condition affects more people than we think. We shouldn’t ignore it anymore.