The great “yesterday night” that lasted for a season ended early this morning: I recall going across the inland freshwater sea by the gloom of night then getting tossed up at the beach. Today though my breast pockets yawn out sand I am thankful to join the land’s side of affairs.
I arrived at the outer limits of my plans (plans made months ago and worn like rings around the eyes): a new home in the old neighborhood, Logan Square. The spot is SITUATIONS, a rad long-running live-art-work-show space where I will be “the new Chip”. Now it’s simply a matter of locating Destiny and surrendering utterly to it.
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Most DIY spaces quickly succumb to the boot of the Man or get swept away in the spit-warm tides of a rager; Situations has endured for more than 5 years by the civilized chill of its tenants. The waves here are good. The aesthetic of the space, chiseled into place by the community crowding within and around it, is playful and weird, as sugar-water for the muses. Enormous building-eating Amazonian babes make a totemic art guard; a drop-ceiling corridor of cats salves the birth trauma; the green planet of Bret Koontz reflects in the mirror. The play of image and colored light, in its vibration, seems like a sonic tone.
Here are visions from this secret folk art landscape –
Obscuro Chicago 