Eric B. Rivera is a Chicago-based artist who grew up in northwest Indiana. After earning his BA in Studio Art and Film Studies from Indiana University, he spent time living and working in Brooklyn, NY and Northampton, England. His work has been featured in Alan Moore’s Dodgem Logic, The Logan Square Literary Review, Lumpen, Chromazoid, & VICE, and he has exhibited artwork in Chicago & overseas. He is also active within Chicago comix artist outlets Brain Frame &Trubble Club, as well as frequent contributor to jungle-haze band, Energy Gown.

Cancer stricken artist Fred Burkhart visited Pen, Ink & Song on April 8th to greet a few collectors and gallery owners and to read from his epic poem “A Date with Noah Webster.” This photo retrospective took its name from the recurring phrase in that work – “Patterning the Nerve Speech.”

Fred read the first section of the poem from his wheelchair, surrounded by his photographs. It was a brief reminder of the underground coffeehouses he used to curate, microphone in hand, holding court, cracking jokes, reading Whitman, introducing the next musical act, or simply getting a group of people in a room to pay attention to the moment at hand.

The full poem: http://www.burkhartstudios.com/burkhart/noahwebster.htm

(left to right) Gallerist Carl Hammer, painter Kevin Fair, photographer Edouard Pierre, and gallerist Ken Saunders.

Photos courtesy of Natalie Miller at NGM pix.

…A Tribute to Katsushika Hokusai and Chicago

Karlis Kandero, 2014. 14″ x 21″ Pen, Ink, Zip-a-tone, airbrush.

…is an annual tradition at the Flatiron Arts building, home of PI&S. Artists claim public wallspace and create a winding, collaborative ribbon-mural throughout the hallways of this great, old maze of a building. In 2012, I painted a piece dedicated to Trayvon Martin, who had been killed on Feb. 26th of that year, when George Zimmerman mistook Martin’s Skittles for a weapon. The piece featured real (discharged) multi-colored shotgun shells, and a chalkboard where all the children killed by handguns in the 41 days between First Friday and his death were tallied.

In 2013, I put up a mural celebrating the life of recently deceased artist Ralph McQuarrie and the 100th anniversary of the Flatiron, mashing the image of an imperial star-destroyer with that of the Flatiron receding in a car’s rear-view mirror (with “Studios for rent” spelled backwards.)

This year’s mural show is up through June 6th when the murals get white-washed for the First Friday monthly open studios.

http://www.wickerparkbucktown.info/_blog/Wicker_Park_Bucktown_Insider’s_Guide/post/now-you-see-it-nowyoudont-wickerpark-bucktown/

In 1985, Fred Burkhart took a photo – wait, let me re-phrase that in Burkhart-ese – in 1985, a picture was given to Fred of JoJo Baby, a Chicagoan who would come to be as famous as Fred (if not more so) as a fixture of the Chicago nightlife scene, as a world-renowned drag queen and as a dollmaker.  JoJo was seated on a curb across from the Chicago Diner, and Fred snapped an image of JoJo enjoying his very first veggie burger, clad in silver Docs, with short hair and tiny earlobes, and about 20% of the ink he now sports.

Now, twenty-nine years later, JoJo is a fixture at the Flatiron Arts Building, and his incredible space (part salon, part buildspace, part doll museum) is just down the hall from Pen, Ink & Song, where a collection of Burkhart’s work is displayed. Included is a drawing Fred made from the original photo in 2007.

Much like Fred, JoJo has lived an outlaw artist lifestyle, completely dedicated to his crafts. He has assembled a group of followers and famous friends, and his vision lives on in the Flatiron!

Come through the Flatiron and visit both spaces! Open studios every first Friday of the month, 6 -10pm.

“Music. Have them compare it to music.” 

At Expo Chicago last year, I was happy to see the return of Byron Kim’s work.  My friend was miffed. “It’s a grey panel. I don’t get it.”

Byron Kim, Untitled (for J.B.), 2010, acrylic on canvas, 90 x 72 inches, via James Cohan Gallery

I told this story to Sean and his response was to have the doubters consider detailed, photo-realistic painting to be akin to ornate symphonies or precise, polished prog. rock or even insanely precise cutting DJ’s.  But minimalistic abstractions? These are the painterly equivalent of Kronos quartet or Son House.

Just because there’s less there – or less of what’s expected – doesn’t make it inferior.  Does the Lorde single need more notes?  Does Wagner somehow have more meaning than Bob Dylan? 

And just because something is perfect doesn’t make it great.  Think of the “classical guitar” demo on an 80’s keyboard. Sounds right on, just like the real thing…and boring as hell.

People seem far more willing these days to accept abstraction in the form of a song.  After all, modern musicians aren’t called musicians. They’re called “artists.” Not “Columbia recording artist.” Just artist. They are the most powerful tastemakers in our culture and their output delineates our aesthetic periods.

They make us feel something beautiful we just can’t describe…

…and so does “grey panel.”

Pen, Ink & Song is a creative space in Chicago’s storied Flatiron Arts Building dedicated to the production of black & white sequential art (comics) original acoustic guitar songs (folk music) and the synthesis of the two.