Strange Closets

Crash. It’s pretty much the last thing you want to hear in a ceramics studio. But while snapping photos at the family-owned Crestani Ceramiche in the spectacular countryside of Vicenza, Italy, I felt the back of my leg brush up against something and then . . . crash. To make matters worse, we had just [...]

A few weeks ago I spent several hours hanging out with artist Amanda Clower in her Garfield Park loft studio. I arrived early in the drizzly, overcast afternoon and then without my noticing, even that dreary light disappeared. Time flows more quickly when I’m engrossed in something, most reliably when I’m writing a post or [...]

Sunday’s Open House at 319 Albany offered a tremendous opportunity to meet some of Chicago’s great talents and to see their work in person. What could be a more appropriate image to kick off the photo tour than one of Chicago-based photographer Marc Hauser‘s work? Hauser was selling prints of his work, including beautiful photographs [...]

Artist Michael Thompson and his partner, artist and vintage clothing dealer, Evelyn Daitchman, live and breath art, a fact quickly evident upon entering their home, a large loft with soaring ceilings, wall-to-wall windows and the original concrete floors. The space is a near-perfect example of an authentic, old-school Chicago loft (if you threw in a [...]

David and Nancy have lived in their home for eighteen years and raised three sons there; yet despite its location in Lincolnwood, their house is anything but suburban, its energy far more artistic than parental . . .