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I’m working on creating a portfolio for an upcoming Frank Lloyd Wright show, digging through my older work, and I came across these pieces.  I have a portfolio titled: “Art about Life and Death” and it contains several peculiar works.  The five panels above are from that portfolio.  I hope to someday gain a commission painting them on large canvases, similiar in style to the black and while graphic panels above.

- Christopher Shoup

Bradley, Illinois

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I just finished a small study for “Brassieres and Torches.”  It is copper paint on a 12 x 18 inch canvas (above).  This small study is for sale at a mere $100.  The commission for the large scale piece, which will likely be 4 x 5 foot, has yet to come.  The “actual piece” will make a magnificent attraction on the wall of any modernist’ house (please note that my art is proving to be a high-return investment). Contact me at chrisshoup2011 at gmail dot com if you are a party (or, might I say, modernist) interested in asking more about commissioning the actual piece.

And why, you may reasonably ask, am I selling a large painting of brassieres and torches?  Let me give you the short story.

Alice (my 6 year old daughter) loves to draw.  Amanda and I bought her some really sturdy drawing templates for Christmas.

 One night about a month ago, Alice invited me into her room to draw.  I joined her on the floor with some Prismacolor pens and my writing journal.  She was using her templates and offered to share them.  The .03 fine tip pen in the Prismacolor set fit perfectly into the templates.  Alice drew a girl and some other objects on a page.  I found that one template had a brassiere and torches set.  It was strange enough to be artistically appealing.

 Pictured is my initial idea for the actual piece, dated 1.27.2012.  The person who commissions the full scale art will also receive the entire notebook (above) as a freebee.  And that particular notebook is ripe with journal entries, technical sketches, song lyrics with accompanying chord progressions and other miscellany.

- Christopher Shoup, 3.4.2012

Filed under: art, painting, photography, purchase, writing Tagged: art, brassiere and torches, commission, design, investment, modernist, painting, purchase ]]> http://chrisshoup.com/2012/03/04/brassieres-and-torches/feed/ 0 chrisshoup Brassieres and Torches small study. Christopher Shoup. 2012. Drawing Templates. Christopher Shoup. 2012. Alice template drawing. Christopher Shoup. 2012. Brassieres and Torches original idea in notebook. Christopher Shoup. 2012. http://chrisshoup.com/2012/02/10/response-to-an-unsafe-policy-at-king-middle-grade-school-kankakee-illinois/ http://chrisshoup.com/2012/02/10/response-to-an-unsafe-policy-at-king-middle-grade-school-kankakee-illinois/#comments Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:15:56 +0000 chrisshoup.com http://chrisshoup.com/?p=1925 ]]> The most amazing thing happened within my school building this week!  At King Middle Grade School in Kankakee, Illinois, our educational staff came together, stood up together, and determined together that our long running policy of operating as “fractional parts” of a whole were getting us nowhere fast.  We pooled our collective concerns, agreed to grow beyond our individual differences, and decided to take a stand - together – so that we may regain control of our school building, because it is, for the community of Kankakee, a valuable local resource that is ripe with so much potential!

We drafted proclamation (and no, it wasn’t easy; and yes, it involved earlier and more radical stages to get to its final, responsible draft).  A free .pdf download of our single proclamation can be accessed through this link:  Response to an Unsafe Policy at King Middle Grade School. Kankakee, Illinois

Below is an image of the proclamation (you’d do better to print the .pdf file though) and then I offer my notes on the process (for those of  you who are like me, and like to know where ideas come from).

NOTES ON THE PROCESS

It’s no doubt that I’ve been “all over the place” lately.  I’m working on a major proposal for a “Together Green” grant that will let me teach energy awareness and energy reduction to the student body of the entire Kankakee school district.  I’m reading about current carbon-based energies, a post-carbon future, and also I’m reading about a lot of social activism.  In January I read The Trumpet of Conscience, which is a thin and very accessible volume of five lectures Martin Luther King, Jr. presented during the final winter of his life.  Those lectures ignited a fire within me.  And then, I’ve been facing some escalating and extreme problems in my school building, along with the last decade’s worth of burdens the district has carried along, and something in me said: “Enough is enough.”

This past Sunday morning (February 5), as I sat alone at my kitchen table writing in my journal, the whole world just kind of stopped moving and very clearly I realized that now was the time I stopped fretting about so many problems and just writing about them in my journal and waiting for outside intervention and I start taking active steps towards solving the problems myself.  Ok.  That’s exactly how I took my first step.

I went to school the next morning and unloaded a hodge-podge of solutions on my closest peers.  Yes, I got the crazy eyes in return.  I probably sounded like John Brown. 

But, in this past week, something so wonderful and so unexpected has happened that it goes beyond any description, so I will give the briefest mention of events.  In my building a real leader stepped up; in my building, peers put their heads together and began to talk not as fractional parts but instead as members of a whole; in my building, friends listened to my more “radical” ideas (the pinnacle of which involved my call for a genuine sit in!) and they guided me towards a more responsible and construction approach (thanks, friends!).

So on Wednesday night, I stayed up until 2:30 am writing 18 pages of notes, consulting both volumes of Mary Ellen Snodgrass’s comprehensive and valuable work Civil Disobedience, An Encyclopedic History of Dissidence in the United States, and at the end, with squirrelly and tired eyes, I found I had a great amount of potential but no means of synthesizing my words into a single document.  So, I made what turned out to have been my best decision: I consulted and read a treasure of American letters, King’s very own Letter from Birmingham Jail.  After finishing that, everything I was trying to accomplish made perfect sense, and I completed the first draft of King Middle Grade School’s February 10, 2012 proclamation.

I pray that all buildings in my school district, and all educational buildings throughout our nation, become inspired by our story at King Middle Grade School in Kankakee, Illinois.  I pray that all staffs in all buildings across the nation choose to take responsibility into their own hands as they grow their own sets of wings.  I pray for the future of American public education.

- Christopher Shoup

I finished The Devil the White City by Erik Larson over my holiday break (that book is so well researched, and Larson is a terrific writer, and he manages to explore and describe multiple fascinating topics with amazing literary skill; all of the book’s praise is rightfully earned).  I read the book’s last page during an overwise slow afternoon and you know – I needed to know, right then – what was next.  From my shelf of “books in holding” I made a random grab for a loner from a friend.  It was Odyssey to Ushuaia by Andres Carlstein (I watched the crazy motorcycle video diaries of Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman in Long Way Round and I was told Odyssey to Ushuaia was a natural follow-up).

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Odyssey to Ushuaia is a really great book.  Right away after finishing it I wondered if Carlstein is still the same as his 25 year old self who actually took this motorcycle journey from New York to the southern tip of South America.  There’s a great deal of carefree attitude in here coupled with some bits of loathing and a line or two of scorn when Carlstein doesn’t get his way.  There’s a wealth of interesting detail – enough so that the wealth runs right to the end of the book, which is an accomplishment for Carlstein the travel writer.  I don’t know if any avid cross continental motorcycle adventurer could identify with exactly all of Carlstein’s experience, or if any budding motorcycle adventurer would grow tremendously after having read Carlstein’s narrative, but that doesn’t really seem to be the point.  The structure and story content is strong; if like me you suddenly find yourself between books and need something to reach for, I’d recommend this.  Afterwards you can always return to whatever high-falutin’ adventure you happen to be on yourself.

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A major part of my personal self-study right now involves reading about energy, energy sources, energy policy, and energy sustainability.  It is 2012.  Energy is a big topic.  My goal, as human, is to learn about energy so I can personally be a better energy consumer, and so that I can guide my family to be better, and so that I can inspire others to be better.  My goal, as a teacher, is to learn about and understand energy well enough so that I can teach today’s youth about energy; if they just grow up knowing this stuff, they should grow up to make better informed and more conscientious energy decisions.  When I was on Amazon looking up a Jared Diamond book, I came across this title, which involves real scientists and science-based thinkers handling the gamet of energy issues and topics in short essays published within a single collection.  I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Rosetta Stone, but just know that the Rosetta Stone’s come to symbolize any single source that offers a wealth of information and guidance from one single document point.  The Post Carbon Reader is published by the Post Carbon Institute.  Every literate person with good-to-strong reading skills should own this book.   It’s a Rosetta Stone.  Not only do you owe it to yourself to become more energy-educated so you can make better, more informed energy decisions – you also owe it to the rest of us, because we’re all sharing the same space with you. 

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“To the moon, please!  Ode for Newt Gingrich.”

By Karl Eltwater, front runner for the 2012 American poet laureate post

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Newt Gingrich, I don’t go to swingers parties in Florida,

so I didn’t see you during your visit there this month.

But we’re cool, man, I mean about the parties.

Everybody should have a right to do as they wish in private.

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I did, however, learn from my wife today

that she heard on talk radio where

you said you would have Americans

living on moon bases by the end

of your second term. 

Moon bases!

By the end of your second term!

That’s the most kick-ass stoner

thing any candidate’s said yet!

It way beats Santorum’s

downer talk about raped and pregnant daughters

and Willard Romney’s obvious tax returns.

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I couldn’t contain

myself!  “Wife!” I exclaimed.

“I have to go read for myself!”

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I jumped off the couch.

I ran into the kitchen.

I hooked up the laptop.

I got online and I googled

“…newt gingrich moon colony…”

and sure as shit,

in a google nanosecond,

yep.

There they were.  Articles posted today,

January 26, 2012,

heralding your lunar vision!

My man Newt!

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I too agree with moon bases!  Hells yes, I say!

I mean, this planet sucks.  That’s for sure.  Everything

is not any good anymore.  It’s broken.

Let’s skip town – let’s move the species

off this God Forsaken rock and enjoy

the beauty of the moon!  I say we send

Dick and crew up there on the first ship

so they can immediately start to explore

for oil and natural gas! 

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And imagine – all the gray powdery dust we could

ever want!  And being fat?  Forget about it!

We would weigh like so much less.

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I don’t think I can fly.  I’m getting old,

I have poor health insurance, I’m tied

to my mortgage and I still have 179 months

to pay on my student loans

and a dozen other dogs are barking

at me, so volunteering for the first wave

of space pioneers is probably unlikely for me!

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But I will sacrifice for the cause, you know -

because I know you’ll ask, just like Kennedy did.

I will give up all hope for myself as I stay

down here, a lonely man left adrift

on this dangerous and

polluted stone. 

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I will seek employment at one

of the food packing factories, you know.

Because, like I’m sure you’ve considered,

you can’t just go up there grow your own food.

Unless you talk with Monsanto.  Hell,

they know how to engineer anything.

They could probably engineer something

that would grow in the lunar dust.

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I will be a food packer, loading the super

spaceships and shiny transport vehicles

at the space ports that I know will

help build viable industries in my

great state.

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I, along with the rest of my castaway

earth-peers, Mr. Future President, will pack with pride,

you can be sure of that. 

We’ll make sure none of the valuable pioneers

risking life and limb on the moon

will have to go hungry, no sir,

Mr. Future President of America!

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And I love the image you selected to accompany

and promote your idea!  It opens up your

article – it’s a black white drawing

of the lunar colony as imagined by

American engineers, Sept. 26, 1969.

At first I thought: we ought to have

a better visual than one that is 42

years old, but then I remembered:

 you’re the expert,

not me.

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And in the article, it said that after “The crowd erupted in applause,”

you announced how we would be making regular flights

to Mars by 2020.  Like – that’s awesome!

We won’t even have 20 percent of our energy

from renewable resources by then, down here!

But just think – at the same time – we’ll be jaunting

back and forth to Mars! 

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I wonder what Walter Sobchak would have to say

about such a marvel of vision and policy.

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*  The poet, Karl Eltwater, lives and works in Chattanooga, Tennesse, as a front gate guard at a coal mine slurry repository.  He is regularly published across a handful of blogs on three continents, and hopes to one day sell a collection of his best poems on Amazon.  He also sent me a link to the article upon which the second part of his poem on is based.  That link is: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/newt-gingrich-promises-moon-base-flights-mars-reality/story?id=15449425.  And for ease of user access, I screen captured the actual article below…

This is a screen capture from the Washington Post. They hated Eltwater's poem and the moderators would not allow me to post a link to the poem for their readers. That seems odd - Eltwater's poem is very clearly a pro-Gingrich piece. Is the Washington Post biased against this very potential Republican presidential frontrunner?

PDF link (4 highly engaging, readable pages): Data Daze. On Standardized Test Practice, District 111, Kankakee, Illinois. Christopher Shoup. 2012.

And below is a screen capture of page one.  Please read the pdf and if you’re inspired to comment, let me hear it.

Today is Saturday 1.7.2012.  In Illinois, it got up almost to 50 degrees.  Normally I’m huddled down inside against freezing winds at this time – but today I was in the sunshine.  Without a jacket.  Alice played on her swing set. 

I’ve been wanted to better define my intention for this blog.  Yesterday, when returning from the library, I had the idea flash into my head to photograph a scroll.  I would use the scroll to define my goal of using this blog as one long, unbroken scroll documenting my artistic behaviors and intentions since I started writing it in November, 2010.  That makes the reading easier (?).  No clicking page to page.

Seriously.  Scroll down.  It’s one long piece and already a long way to the bottom (start at ‘home’ up top) and the geological layers continue to compound with each new post.

"The Road to Next Year." Christopher Shoup. December 29, 2011. Davies Creek; Kankakee, Illinois.

 Well the good news is that I was in the woods, wandering, and the road to next year completely presented itself to me.  This is a great sign.

Please click on the links above for more information about this photographic print.

Thanks!

I don’t know why she had you.
More often than not, because of nature,
you know?  Life reproduces.  Life gets together
under a myriad of conditions
and it’s ridiculous to think even half of us
were planned.

I do know, however, that a sperm
cell (which is essentially a nucleus
and a tail carrying 23 chromosomes)
entered your mom’s womb
touched an egg
and poof,
you became.
Two for two.

I know that in your mom’s womb
you grew a tail
and lost a tail
and grew a neural tube
which made your brain
and spinal cord
and you grew
your heart and digestive tract
and eyes and ears
and arms and legs
and sex organs.
Three for three.

I know that at some point
you left your mom’s womb.
Four for four.

And now you’re grown up,
doing what?  Reading my
blog?  Reading an online
magazine?  Reading a
printed poetry anthology?

It’s quite possible that I know your mom.

Documentation of the painting (atop a repurposed map).

I’m selling work at a holiday market today at Kankakee’s beautiful downtown public library.  The theme for the artists showing and selling work is “green art.”  I created 15 new pieces atop a book of maps I salvaged from my school’s dumpster.  The maps were printed by National Geographic in the early 1970′s.   Caretta caretta is the scientific name for “loggerhead turtle.”

Where am I at?  Persevering.  Oh there’s some greatness in my life, that’s for sure.  But you know, artistically, it can be a strange path.  Sometimes the best thing to do is simply perserve through the strangest of times.  And for reference, do you literally want to know where I’m at?  I’m fixed atop this small plot of land on the curvilinear chest of the North American continent.  Find North America.  Find its five Great Lakes.  That lowest one is Lake Michigan.  Scroll down some fifty or sixty miles south of its southern tip, careful not to leave the Illinois border for Indiana, and you’ll just about find me.  Here I am!  I’m at my table, typing this blog entry.  I’ll stop to wave out the window.  Can you see me on Google Earth?!

I don’t assume I’m widely read.  As a matter of fact, you might be the only person reading right now.  You might have drifted here on your own, astronautically all by yourself through the worm holes of the Internet to “here.”  Welcome.  Let’s say this is a moment of conversational intimacy.  We hear one another, right?  Let me tell you that I don’t want to kill you.  I also don’t want to see you killed in a war.  I’ll tolerate your way of life if it isn’t harming me.  I don’t want to invade the place where you live.  I’m sorry about the fact that my lifestyle demands resources from foreign lands.  I know the resources that fuel my lifestyle are oftentimes obtains in unjust manners.  I want you to know I research to make better choices and I speak up and out about the harm my Western lifestyle causes others.  I just want to live in peace, and I wish the same for you. 

This conversation is decidedly one-sided, you see, because I’m typing, and you’re reading, and there’s no exchange because this is a static document.  I’ll pretend that you’re interested in what I have to say, and that you’re going to keep reading.

The following report is about two books, a foreign movie and an American band.  This is where I’m at.

• VONNEGUT

My mom gets catalogues in the mail which sell clearing house books, warehouse overstock and university press titles.  She’s a huge reader too.  She’s got a wide reading taste.  She’s bought, read and passed along several great books, including one called The Wheatgrass Mechanism by Canadian poet and educator Don Gayton; a book of essays that recount the wilderness of upper North America; most recently she finished and loaned me a book of posthumously published Vonnegut stories.  His voice is perfectly let-me-assert-myself American; his paragraph structures are short and he often weaves pages and pages of two and three sentence paragraphs; I’m almost through with the stories in Look at the Birdie and let me tell you, I got transfixed in a few of them, enough so that I could sit on the couch and read while about me went on cooking, questions and handstands.

• THE PIRATES OF SOMALIA

The story about the Somalian pirates, let me tell you, is unbelievably interesting.  Some weeks ago, after I finished reading his latest manuscript, the contemporary American writer David Jarecki and I met for lunch.  Somewhere in our drifting dialogues David brought up the Somalian pirates.  I thought I knew the basic story because I had read about them in the BBC from time to time and in some American dailies, but it turned out I didn’t know anything, and what David knew completely enthralled my intellectual curiosity.  After reading much about them online, I ordered Jay Bahadur’s book from the Kankakee Public Library, The Pirates of Somalia.  Today I got through the prologue and some of the first chapter and I plan on devouring the text.

• INCENDIES

It’s my rule, because I am a public school teacher and under the scrutinous eye of Ole’ Man Public, to not cuss in my blog entries, but after getting the new release foreign film Incendies from the Kankakee Public Library and watching it, all I can say is: “Wholly Fuck.”

I’m serious.  I can’t remember when any movie gripped me and insisted on my emotional engagement as hard.  The mother’s perseverance throughout the life she lived in this film made me question everything I know about our species.  The characters may have been portraying people foreign to me, but this is really an “every person” story.  The scene where the mother wakes up on the bus to encounter one faction of her country’s warring parties and what happens next?  Our species is ridiculous.  The entire last hour of the film?  The ending which I didn’t possibly expect but happened none the less?  You’ll seriously need to put aside 2 uninterrupted hours some night before bed to watch this one.

• WILCO.  THE WHOLE LOVE.

I’ve been a Wilco listener since the release of Being There (1996) which is essentially when I first encountered them.  Then yes, I searched backwards and found A.M. (1995) and I went backwards to Uncle Tupelo and along the way I bought a Son Volt album, but before long it was just Wilco and what they put out next.  I view Jeff Tweedy, as do many others, as an “artist’s artist.”  He puts his talent out front, which obviously comes with its own hitches and requires a lot from him, but he puts it out front like many artists want to do.  I liked everything up until Wilco (The Album) (2009).  I’ll take the blame.  Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for it. 

But then came Wilco’s newest album, The Whole Love (2011).

After a 22 mile mountain bike ride at the Kankakee River State Park, Steven Kramer and I stopped at Starbucks of all places, because I promised Amanda I wouldn’t stop for a beer, as we had been doing after our rides.  It seems those “one beer” stops had started to lead to two and three and four… Sunday afternoon beers.  So we were at Starbucks.  I was waiting for my coffee and there was the new Wilco album so I bought it.  I can honestly say I’ve listened to The Whole Love some 1 or 200 hundred times in the last 50 days or so; sometimes it’s just one or two or three songs on the way to work and back from work, but my listening’s been steady, and each continued play of the songs continues to satisfy me.  The album offers so much diversity; it’s ecologically balanced and the varied styles and speeds connect to many different parts of my own artistic temperament and musical preferences.

It’s important to note right away that I have a full time job (I’m a public school teacher, working in the very urban Kankakee school district).  I also have health insurance for my entire family (the premium of which consumes $400 of our month income, and still leaves us with an additional $30 co-pay anytime we visit a doctor).  All bills in our household are current; my wife and I are both current on our student loans (which collectively drain $450 dollars from our monthly incomes).  We have no cable bill.  We maintain few material desires.  If we use a credit card, it’s done so responsibly, and we maintain no or low balances.  We eat healthy (we’re vegetarians) and we’re happy to spend our fiscal resources on organic and small batch foods.  We don’t have much to show after our monthly expenses are met, but we float, and sustaining ourselves is currently more important that hording money.  Therefore I’m not involved in the occupation because I need a job.  I don’t need health insurance.  I’m not asking for the government to pay back my student loans.  Instead, I’m involved because I’ve learned and had enough.  An emergent class of pirates has taken over the American nation.  Pirates have been voted into Congress.  Pirates have gained control of the regulatory agencies.  Armies of pirate lobbyist flood the federal and state capitals.  Pirates are stationed outside our collective taxpayer’s bank account.  Pirates readily loot our fiscal treasure.  Pirates pillage their way across America state by state, and at our expense, pirates rape and pollute our common resources to build their own personal fortunes.  There have always pirates—greedy, self-serving people—for as long as there have been people.  The American system was designed to keep the pirates at bay.  But the system failed.  The pirates have gained control.  And now I’m done with them. 

I learned about Occupy Wall Street on September 17, 2011.  That’s the day people first officially gathered in New York’s Zuccotti Park.  The movement was actually the inspiration of a group of Canadian activists from Adbusters, which describes itself as “a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age.”  I’ve read about and followed the occupation since day one.  Interesting, I thought.  First there was the Arab spring.  Now there’s the American late-summer.  And they started the movement outside the very gates of the problem.  Where will it go?

The occupation went forward.  Tens of thousands of independent, previously disconnected people suddenly found that they shared feelings similar to the New York occupiers.  Occupations appeared in Oakland, Seattle, Raleigh, Chicago and scores of smaller cities.  And I found myself to be one of those people who shared those feelings of collective frustration.

The occupations are about a nation of people awakening.  Awakening to what?  I read the alternative press.  I’ve read first-hand accounts from the occupiers currently flooding the social media.  I talk to others.  I continuously find that everyone has their own reasons for being frustrated, and that everyone is awake at different levels.  The comments and articles and photographs and videos online clearly show leaderless gatherings of people who have come together for their own reasons, but collectively, they all demand greater justice and greater equality; justice and equality are righteous and reasonable causes; calls for both are important, and especially right now, given the national circumstances.  Individual participation and taking control of one’s destiny, it turns out, feels good.

I’m not content to simply follow the national occupation narrative.  I’ve decided to become an active participant, even if my actions have only (so far) been hour long participations at two occupation events.  In October, Amanda and our five year old daughter Alice went to Occupy Chicago.  And on my own, on Saturday, November 19, I participated in Occupy Kankakee.

The leadership amongst the occupiers on the corner of Court Street and Schuyler was refreshingly anonymous.  The sign-in sheet was pleasantly missing.  It was simply a place where you could go if you believed things needed to change, and that change would only come through active participation.

The consensus amongst the people gathered on the Kankakee street corner was that things are totally screwed up and out of balance, and the pirates running the system will only be evicted if we engage them, and ultimately kick them out. 

My biggest problem with the nation’s police force in regards to the occupation movement (think New York and Oakland) is that they seem clueless about the “balance” they are striving to maintain.  The current balance is clearly designed to benefit the pirates—which means the police are striving to maintain an “imbalance.”  The occupation seeks to disrupt the current imbalance in order to restore a truer balance.  I know.  It’s flipped around.  I believe the pirates want to keep the nation’s police force confused; I believe the pirates drill the mantra into the nation’s police force that the current balance must remain the current balance, and that any teetering of the totter is to be met with resistance.  Kankakee’s police officer who approached Saturday night’s occupiers, however, was cool.  He seemed interested in questioning the occupiers so he knew where they intended to be stationed, not so he could call his peers and crush our heads; and he dismissed himself by saying that if there was any trouble, dial 911 and he’d be right there. 

Kankakee is not New York or Oakland but like every occupation across the American nation, it’s important.  Local occupation is important because the occupation has literally become a living organism, and every individual participant represents one small—yet important—cell in the body of the larger thing.  I predict that the occupations will go indoors during the winter months, and the ability to monitor and diminish the feelings of a million individuals is beyond the pirate’s capabilities.  I predict that the living organism will gain mass over this American winter, which gives me all the more reason to anticipate the coming American spring.

White oak triptych

Narrative tree triptych

Narrative art tells a story.  Not all artists set out to create such “story-telling” work, but I admire those who do.  Diego Rivera painted large murals that overwhelm the senses with details and with the presentation of a story as told from many angles.  It’s almost guaranteed that no two viewers will walk away from a Rivera mural having the same interpretation.  Mayan, Egyptian, Middle Eastern, Northwestern and Native American cultures kept narrative art amongst them.  Their art, ranging from simple images set into specific arrangements that told just the perception of a story, and all the way to detailed images arranged with care to tell a complex story, inspires me.  The challenge, though, as an artist, is: “What’s the story of my people?”  “How to create narrations of consumers, of environmental polluters, of wage slaves, of perpetual war-mongers through narrative art?”  I’d like to be given a viaduct so I can set about creating a large narrative mural that tells the story of local people.

My first attempt at narrative art – at creating art that told a story – involved a drawing I completed with my wife, Amanda.  We spent the better part of a winter passing the coldest nights on the living room floor, each working on different aspects of a large piece that not only told the story of the rise and fall of the celebrity in American culture, but also how that story was relished by an audience of insatiable viewers of the event.  It turned out great, I built a frame for it and protected it behind glass, and the piece now hangs in our home.  

Since that first collaboration, I’ve remained interested in attempted to include simply narratives into my art – and by simple, I mean creating paintings that use a few active elements to create the first beginnings of a story.  In one piece I added sunspots above a tree, because I can recall how when, as a kid, I would tromp in the local wetlands on the hottest August days, and sweat would drip into my eyes, so that when I looked up, there would appear, through the beads of sweat, refracted light that always became a bunch of spots.  Actually, I was fascinated by the effect of the spots, which is why I remember them.

My current interest in narrative art involves the use of objects represented either as they are for real – or reinterpreted as symbols – and then arranging these elements about a composition so that the “setting” of the piece helps establish a narrative, or simple story.  One unseen event in this whole process is that I’m not taking active steps to show, place or sell the work, and it’s starting to build up, which is something I imagine the majority of artists face – that is, an excessive output of work equals the fact that all of the wall space in your home is eventually covered with your own work, and the closets get filled, as does the attic and garage.  I think I would like it if one of the contemporarily coined “1 percent” discovers me, likes my work, likes the idea of owning an entire collection of art created by “a commoner” (me) and then sweeps all of my pieces away into his or her collection.  Hey, I can dream aloud, right?

And if you haven’t checked out my super-awesome site at www.christophershoup.zenfolio.com please check it out.  The resolution of the images there are outstanding.

This is work completed within the past few months.  Both were inspired by a trip taken to Bimini with scientists from Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium (during the summer of 2010).  It was my first experience in the ocean.  The coral reefs were fantastic and we visited no fewer than three a day; I got to hover over a swarming, swirling school of silver bar jacks; we went deep into the mangroves right at the tide’s peak, so we got pulled out towards the ocean during the tidal drain; during a night snorkel, a small squid paused before me to change colors in the rays of my underwater flashlight.

I’ve not had many “blog inspirations” lately; my art focus has shifted heavily to my Stratocaster; I’m writing a few essays, most of which will probably never leave my journal; and I’m daydreaming and drafting out a few paintings.

There’s an oak tree that grows alone at the southeast corner of the Perry Farm preserve; my guess is that it’s a few decades over 100 years old.  It’s a giant, and probably owes its age and success to the fact that it grew right in the corner of a pasture (the broad canopy suggests it never competed for light or space).  During youth, this particular tree watched people pass by on horseback; today it watches cars, motorcycles and semi-trucks zip by.  I’ve been close enough to hug the tree.  It shows no signs of dying. 

The painting is oil on oak panel.  I completed it a few years ago but just recently photographed the piece.

Memoir of a day spent rambling and exploring is the title of this triptych.  It’s an honest title.  There was one year of my life, 2004, when I was back on stable ground following a few years wrestling with divorce, and I was living in place that was basically a garage with two small bedrooms, a small bathroom, a small living space, and a narrow kitchen.  Some things during that year just clicked with me.  I was a madman learning to play the guitar; I had an acoustic that plugged into a Marshall practice amp, a few pedals that had been given to me by the Chicago musician and artist Eric Brown.  I lived in the environment of a single guy.  Imagine loud times, complete with bottle caps, a key to the door that opens into the blissful creative moment, and an overwhelming and hungry drive to get on with my life.  I was working out my problems through music.  I was hanging out with like-minded peers, participating with them in regular sweatlodges.  And also I was learning to shoot film through a hand-me-down Canon AE1 that my stepdad had purchased long ago during a stint in Korea (I came in at the end of the film movement). 

Living a few blocks away was the contemporary facebook artist Matt Thiesen.  He and I pursued the leaderless and carefree art movement often referred to as: “Wevegotnothingbettertodowithourfreetimebuthangoutdriftaboutandcreateart.”  During this time we made a lot of really great art films that I still watch and say: “How cool was that?”  It was a terrific time.  We would load up my truck with our gear, leave Bradley, cross the Kankakee River and travel west to Salina and Essex townships.  These were places where we could wander about the stony gravel roads, looking for things that were cool and places we could explore.  One autumn day in 2004, Matt and I went out to an abandoned bridge that crossed Horse Creek.  It was a seasonally great day.  Sunshine.  Wool sweater and jeans weather.  [Look at the signs in the artwork; I have to admit I'm  fascinated with rural man's desire to shoot his rifle at rural signs.  It's as if the lack of game and huntable moments drives him to utter frustration.]

Matt and I had been to that bridge numerous times.  It was an interesting remnant of a recent people, leftover like their remaining corn cribs and barns.  Horse Creek, which ran beneath it, was my favorite rural outpost during my youth.  I spent a great deal of time pedaling my bike five or six miles with the Snedecor brothers and my own brother to daytrip in the water; we’d seine for carp and bass and whatever else we could capture in our broad net.  It took two of us on either end each holding wood poles, whose tips were continually poked tight against the bottom so the dragging net scraped the bottom; upstream would be the other two, splashing in the water, laughing and such, driving all creek organisms directly into the net.  Then the four of us knew to work together to lift the net so it would retain the greatest amount of our catch, and we would just stand around looking at what we found, which always included carp big and small, bluegill, largemouth and rock bass, minnows, the occassional turtle, numerous crawdads, and handfuls of other single species that we couldn’t identify.  Then we would let them go.  And we’d do it again.  And in this way four kids would spend an entire Saturday out of trouble.

When you’re on an art field trip, you need nothing more than a vague plan of what you want to do.  Bring some art medium along so you have something to work on.  You could bring a journal, a camera; paints from a spray can, tube or gallon container; a guitar or drum; whatever.  And be happy that you learned somewhere in your life (or you’re learning) how to occupy yourself in productive peace for an afternoon or an evening.  You’re not bothering the world when you make art. 

After Matt and I left the bridge we drifted about the gravelly haze of the backroads some more, stopping I’m sure here and there, and eventually our last stop us to a burnt out stone house that stood along Warner Bridge Road.  It was a good subject.  I had the film developed as 4×6 duplicate photos.  Back then I was beginning to explore compose with photography, thinking of images not as individual things but more so as notes in a song.  It was during the summer of that year that I got captivated by patterns; started my tessellations; and in general found myself being completely serious about my art.  Memoir of a day spent rambling and exploring is arranged inside three identical frames.  The frames were drilled into the appropriate edges, and I sewed the frames together with heavy leather cord.  It’s taken me this long (it’s Saturday, October 22, 2011) to properly photograph a piece  I made in 2004.  This piece is available.

America currently has 65 operating, and aging, nuclear power plants.  Recently, it’s been documented that some of the buried pipes around the plants are leaking.  Leaking?  Nuclear waste is leaking into the subsurface of our local environments?

A few years ago I collected a dozen maps from the school building where I work, to save them from the dumpster, and this is the first large map I painted on (the latex paint bends and this map can still be rolled up for transport!).  Probable Poisoning is painted atop a 60 x 60 inch map of the United States.  It’s my reaction to the leaking pipes (and decaying infrastructure) found about America’s nuclear power plants.  I’ve got plans to paint the other 11 maps.  I think this will make a cool series of work.

I’m old enough to remember the release of Beat Street (1984) and Breakin’ (1984) and the how those films brought pop locking and breakdancing to every square inch of America.  Even the small town kids could join “the counter culture revolution,” which I willingly joined.  I’m also old enough to remember the release of Rad (1986), which caused every 13 year old I knew (including myself) to scavenge plywood and jump our bikes over sidewalk ramps.  I also remember Thrashin’ (1986) which caused us to suppliment our pedaling with skateboarding (I broke my wrist within a month).  Trends have a way of traveling around the great cultural roulette wheel; some things are fated to return.  Hence the contemporary crop of youth that has revived and respun their own ”counter cultural revolution” via BMX bikes and skateboards.  

It’s awesome that the Kankakee Park District built such a great place for the area youth.  It’s a place for kids who have their own sets of talents, but their talents are not often given a chance to appear during the normal school day.  I mean, during a regular school day, how many chances does a student have to shine if ”shining” to them means launching themselves off a ramp to become vertically airborn?  Or if “shining” means completing a complex set of manuevers to get you and your skateboard onto, across and over a big obstacle?  The same kid who might not care at all about learning to solve a difficult algebra problem will go to the skate park and spend an hour practicing and problem-solving the moves of a single trick until the trick can be performed.  And then the trick will be repeated and repeated until perfected.  It’s not that the skate-culture youth are poor learners – it’s that they’re different learners, motivated by physical, not paper, problems.

My last observation of the day involved my seeing such a mixed crowd of kids come together in peace.  That rocks.  And my guess is that since there are so many operating skate parks around the country that persist and are respected by their users, Kankakee’s skate park will persist and be respected by its users.  In a world where the headlines speak of constant doom, this is an example of something that kicks ass.

What’s going on in America?  Occupation.  Amanda and I knew of the Wall Street occupation on its first day; we’ve followed alternative press reports as the occupation spread to other cities; on Sunday, October 9, we decided to head to Chicago’s financial district (Jackson and LaSalle) to see the local occupation for ourselves.  

The problem can be simply stated.  Policies are written by corporations.  The policies are then sent to Washington for approval.  Each policy first and foremost benefits the corporate writer.  Why?  Because corporations run the system.  But the system wasn’t established so corporations could get behind the wheel and drive.  We must push them out of the car and regain the driver’s seat.  “Why,” you ask, “won’t our elected politicians just push the corporations out?”  Politicians are now corporate servants.  We have to regain control of our politicians and make them push.  Hence we are forced to occupy our own public domains to put the required pressure on our politicians; our interests must again be our elected politicians’ interests.

There were musicians.  There were bicycles.  There were signs.  People were calling the problem out by its name.  The weather was perfect.  I highly suggest you visit your nearest occupation, even if just for a half an hour.  Your presence is a weight on some politician’s shoulders; become a stone.

These two oil paintings remember two native species I grew up with.  By the time I was tromping through them as young boy (in the late 70′s and early 80′s) the rural ditches and creeks were rapidly becoming polluted by a rise in industrial farming chemicals.  The dinosaur-like snapping turtle, though, didn’t seem affected.  I ran into snapping turtles on a daily basis.  And above me, always, were native red tailed hawks.  Both are for sale through my purchase link.

…and a left-handed acoustic guitar I painted (the color tiles around it are recycled countertop samples salvaged from an out of business carpet store).

Anxious to see a print of my own work, I ordered one through www.christophershoup.zenfolio.com, where I just recently created a site to sell my work.  It’s a very professional deal.  You select the size, pay with credit card or paypal and choose any shipping method.  The photo above is a print from my square tessellations; the quality of photography paper is excellent – the resolution and shine of the print is excellent – this particular 12 x 12 inch size could fit perfectly into an “album cover frame.”  I’m going to frame the above print myself in walnut.  Here’s me begging you to click the link and at least see what I’ve accomplished.

The Perry Farm Card Series

Past experience tells me that the holiday season is good for art sales; this year, I drafted out a plan, I am ahead of schedule, and look forward to my interactions with the locavores.  I created art cards to sell in packs of four, which I will sell through local businesses.  Local art, about local subjects, for the local population.   

But I also want to make my work available to Brazilians, Canadians, Sudanese, Germans, Russians and the Japanese.  So for the last two weeks I woke up at 5am daily to construct www.christophershoup.zenfolio.com, which is my online print (and originals) sales locale.  The site turned out beautiful.  Below is a screen capture.  Visit if you can.

www.christophershoup.zenfolio.com

The contemporary writer David Jarecki, whom I’ve had the good fortune to befriend, recently stated in an email, “…enough with the photography for a while, for damn sakes!  Get back to the painting, where the real action’s at!”  Or something like this. 

Anyhow, late Sunday night I went to the garage/studio and dug out a painting I’ve been meaning to finish for almost 2 years, and in a single sitting I finished it.  I never had to original proportions of the hawk correct; I was minutes from taking a sander to the piece and starting over with a clean slate when I picked up a brush and decided I would extend the left-side wing to correct the proportion and see how that looked.  And the heavens opened up, I got it correct, and thought, “How am I going to match the original oil paint colors?  I don’t remember what I used.”  I was terrified; then I realized that any decent viewer would be able to paint the rest him or herself; so I present a piece that is ”challenging as it stands but ultimately finished.”  Consider the title when viewing.

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All of these photographs originate from a place that is a mile from my kitchen table, at the Perry Farm Prairie in Bradley, Illinois.  The prairie is beautiful when its many shades of summer green begin to drain from the grasses, revealing their true brown, tan and golden colors.  I really like the prairie on cool days, when the Illinois sky becomes pure blue and gentle air currents pull fully pronounced clouds across the troposphere.

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For over a year, I’ve been on a major self-study course.  I’ve read native plant books and taught myself the names of the local native flowers.  Above are white asters, a flowering milkweed, Jerusalem artichoke, rough blazing star; I can also identify and name by sight the various prairie grasses and also a growing body of native invertebrates.

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I’m going print each series of four images on cards (there will be four cards to each pack).  I’m going to sell the cards in the local Bradley and Bourbonnais markets; they will be ready for the holiday season so local folks can purchase local art about local subject matter as holiday gifts for family and friends.

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Also, I’m going to sell unframed photographs of each image online, through Zenfolio.  On the back of each card will be the series title, my name, and a note that says, “To purchase card images as unframed photographs, visit: www.chrisshoup.com/purchase.” 

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The series above, of the denuded tree silhouette tessellations, is titled “Sundown over emergent prairie.”  I took these photographs right at the beginning of March.  I am extremely happy with the colors.

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I consider this plan fairly ambitious because I have to pull if off at a time when I’m particularly busy with teaching sixth graders, with being a father (which seems to only get harder as the daughters get older), and with being a husband.  Yet I’m continually driven to be an artist who sells work.

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The guy above is Nick LeRoy.  I’m not for sure, so don’t quote me on this, but I heard that sometime during a tumultuous snowstorm in February of 2009, LeRoy awoke from the whirls and howls to envision a stage surrounded by cornfields and wind turbines, set somewhere outside Kinsman, Illinois (population 99).  On this stage, his favorite regional bands played to a crowd of the same chill festival followers that he was so often a part of, and in this vision the organizer and promoter of the fest was none other than Nick himself.  Sometime later, after coffee, he made some calls, found a friend willing to share his family’s farm for a weekend, and the first FarmFest 450 was born.  Nick’s third FarmFest 450 was held at that same farm over the weekend of August 19 and 20, 2011, and I was fortunate enough to attend the latter half of the event.  I had no idea what to expect.  I knew that people would be camped out there for the weekend.  I knew I would get to see some important musicians and bands.  I knew there would be vegetarian options amongst the vendors.  I brought Amanda, a blanket, my camera, a few other peaceful items and my desire to explore.

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First, let me say something about the land around the festive.  It is open countryside, with ground that rolls like a vacationer’s sea set to mild undulation.  From this rising and falling cornscape sprout might gray wind turbines like those that are becoming so visible throughout middle Illinois.  To drive on the single lane blacktop to FarmFest 450 is to travel amongst the turbines, and at one point, where one stood near the road, I had to stop and get out so I could see the mammoth object that cannot be reproduced by a photograph.  The turbines are awesome to witness and hear in action, and when time fads away their utility, but not their structure, future generations that crossed the burning bridges will marvel at them and wonder what purpose they could have served.  Or so I like to believe.  Anyhow, they added to my sense of anticipation and excitement for what was to come.

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FarmFest 450 had excellent logistics.  To the north of the farm estate on which it was located was a large and level grass parking area, and parking was well-managed from entrance to our final designated parking spot—the good service was inviting.  There were two camping settlements, each composed of a hodgepodge of tents and gear and relaxed sippers and fire pit cookers and yard game players.  Past camping was the stage.  It was set at the bottom of a long and wide yard that sloped east, so the western eye of the sun stared into the eyes of the musicians, rather than the audience (musicians accept this professional hazard).  The goods that typically followed such festivals were there (you know jewelry, pottery, handcrafted apparel) along with a local bar selling cans of standardized American beer (most folks seemed to have brought their own) and there were many food options.  The crowd we encountered upon our 4 o’clock arrival?  It was set to a speed somewhere between koala bear and willow sloth.  Which was perfect.  Which was exactly what I hoped for.  Amanda and I fit right in amongst the competitionless seating scheme, finding a great spot to pitch our blanket and offload our bags.  As the sun descended behind us, past the farm’s flank of trees, we sat and shared Indian fry bread, drank a bit, listened a lot, intermingled with others between sets and were perfectly happy. 

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One of our intermingling moments involved meeting and talking with Ezra of Ezra’s Chameleon Kitchen.  I would responsibly liken him to a contemporary gypsy, only his mule cart is way more fantastic than a vurdon made from wood and iron nails.  Ezra is a studied chef who cooks on the road.  His travel trailer is state of the art and partly run by solar panels and a small wind turbine that spins to power a battery bank during highway miles; his energy awareness is great, and his future plan involves him running his complete outfit on renewable resources; he also creates food that tastes local and lovingly prepared and he is health-conscious about his work.  Vegan food that tastes like it’s from a small Chicago diner, only you procured it from a grassy oasis between farm fields?  Right on.  He had along with him the painter Andrew Nelson, who ingeniously designs paintings meant to be viewed and re-interpreted within different spectrums of light. 

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The first musician I heard was Chicago Farmer.  I have a live John Prine album, simply called John Prine Live.  It’s is a collection of songs Prine recorded during performances all throughout the seventies.  It’s not just his artful, folk story-songs on the album that so engage me; it’s also the simple, short stories he tells on stage prior to starting each song that I love.  The recordings make me feel “like I’m there” when I listen, yet rarely do I get out to see a folkish troubadour doing this kind of singing and story telling on stage (the last time was seeing Jeff Tweedy at the Vic).  Therefore I was pleasantly thrilled when Chicago Farmer took the stage at 4:45 and like Prine, and in the vein of Tweedy as a solo artist, I found another Illinoisan with his acoustic guitar singing stories and telling stories live on stage.  Chicago Farmer’s songs are about things you’d see through a pickup truck window; or through the window of Carl’s Diner in Nowhere Particular, Illinois as you drink your fourth cup of coffee; or through the window of several beers as you sit on a stool amongst a bar crowd.  He told me he’d journeyed from a small town to Chicago and back to more small towns.  He’s a working musician; his months are tied together with performances and festivals which put him in position to be continuously discovered.  I purchased a t-shirt from his merchandise table because I identify with the artwork.  I’m also from a small town.  I too journeyed to Chicago for some years.  I also later returned to my roots. 

Chicago Farmer has an effective online presence.  Listen to what he does, invest in a some songs because local folk will add depth to your collection and every man deserves a few coins for a song, and then get out of the house and go see him at a festival where he’s playing.  You need the fresh air and you’ll like being a part of an engaged crowd.

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I assumed there would be people milling about The Steepwater Band after their set, people who were meeting them or waiting to talk to them, so minutes after they finished playing I went down the sloped lawn and around the plastic fencing to the back of the stage, to the area where the bands mingled.  I found myself in a spot boxed in by the back of the stage, a van, a porta potty, and a trailer that had been provided for the musicians.  It turns out there were not throngs of people crowding Steepwater; on the contrary it was just the three band mates, each engaged in the humble act of breaking down gear before loading it back in the van.  Their set was awesome.  They are rockers, and the great leap from Chicago Farmer with his solo acoustic on goings and to an amplified three-piece was totally cool.  The sudden jumps between genres and volumes is what I most like about local festivals. 

I had only listened to a few Steepwater songs online prior to seeing them, when I was previewing who I would see at FarmFest.  What I heard in the song “Revelation Sunday” inspired me to find them on YouTube, where I watched a few videos that only confirmed how good they are.  Jeff Massey sounds like a cool guy yelling across the tool shed at 7 am because he thinks you misplaced his 5/8” box end wrench; at times his Gibson sounds like the idling engine of a 1978 Camaro; at other times it sounds like the same car peeling out; many songs inspire loud volume listening.  A scan through the band’s archived tour schedule from the past decade is crazy; they seemingly play nonstop, with the breaks between shows probably reserved for travel time and limb recuperation. 

Backstage I introduced myself to drummer Joe Winters as he broke down drum components.  I told him I was an online writer, that I liked their work and I liked that they ended with an excellent version of “Boom Boom” by John Lee Hooker.  I told him I read they played with Gov’t Mule and Buddy Guy and Wilco and a crowd of other national acts and how I thought that must be cool; Winters told me they recently opened for Tesla at the House of Blues and the New York Dolls at Double Door.  He told me they toured Europe and were going again soon.  I told him I was reviewing the fest and would mention them.  Then I talked to Massey and told him how excellent I thought his guitar playing was during the whole show and how much I liked the John Lee Hooker ending.  I got all three of them and the porta potty to poise for a very fine photograph and right as I was about to go catch the guys from Backyard Tire Fire, Winters appeared with a CD of a live performance Steepwater recorded at Double Door and also a copy of their just released album Clava.  They were fantastic gifts.   

I want to mention their latest album Clava because I listened to it like twenty times in six days.  The first three songs compliment one another to make an excellent opening triptych (as a matter of fact I would encourage them to open some shows with these three back to back).  Other songs on the album continue Massey’s punctuated riffs played under the influence of the previously described tones; and there is a divergent and reverberating song called “Bury the Burden Deep” that you must listen to loud and through headphones; it works.  And it also shows how as a hard-working band they write with a spirit of diversity, because hard-working bands know diversity keeps multiple listener types engaged. 

It was exactly the divergent and less guitar-centered songs on Clava that kept sending me back to my past.  “What,” I kept thinking, “am I hearing?” 

It took me a few days to get to the closing song “Meet Me in the Aftermath,” and when I listened to it, it triggered the synoptic connection.  I was hearing Paul Westerberg on Pleased to Meet Me (1987), an album I once totally liked and listened to on cassette tape.  So the leap from Chicago Farmer to Steepwater continued to The Replacements.  Excellent.  I don’t know where you live, but if it’s somewhere, probably Steepwater’s coming within range.  See them live, that’s how they best like playing.  Add a few tunes or all of Clava to your digital music rotation, because the album will make you pedal your mountain bike harder.

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Miles Nielsen and the Rusted Hearts, I did not get to meet you due to the storm that blew up and threatened the entire festival right after your set, which was when I planned to say hello.  Most of what I found of you online involved your quest to find backers to pledge for the vinyl album you want to record.  Even as great as it will be, I believe your album will be an arrow pointing towards the requirement that you are seen and heard live.  On stage there’s movement, microphone switching, instrument switching, songs that climb upwards to stop at little cabins so everyone can catch up, and then when everyone’s accounted for you take them back outside and climb higher.  I didn’t catch the name of the song, but you have one with lyrics: “…if I go, crawling back to you, would you take me as I am, or would you take me for a fool…”  That song is like looking at a small, sturdy oak tree.  You see it’s a good tree, and you imagine how given the right conditions, it could be huge. 

Your lineup was right on, giving you the advantage of five talented musicians offering five points of view on the same thing.  And then you said goodnight.  And left the stage.  And then a minute later you all came back on.  “Sorry,” you said, noting that you actually had more time.  So you just picked up your instruments and at the same exact time burst into the next song like there had been no interruption.  And finally at the end, Miles put down his guitar and picked up the microphone, stand and all.  He said since it was a festival, he’d end with a true festival closer.  I  swear when he began to sway about the stage like a man on rough seas I guessed it.  They closed their set with Joe Cocker’s festival megastar version of  The Beatle’s “With a Little Help from My Friends.”  It was so cool, and Miles was a notch more coherent than Cocker (no disrespect, Joe) while his band was note for note alive and raw with the song, even immaculately singing the high parts.  Those who weren’t present will have no way to appreciate the whole-band genius that I am describing.

Backyard Tire Fire was scheduled to perform next (sorry if, when I met you, I offended you with the comment about your tiny piano; please know I like the Kink.FM performance of “Good to Be.”  The tiny piano apparently stuck out.  It was something I felt comfortable referencing when I introduced myself.  You told me it was played by Steve Berlin from Los Lobos.  Sometimes I’m ridiculous). 

But Backyard Tire Fire didn’t play because of the stereostrobic forboding of an approaching storm.  A dark mountain, from which came thunder and light, appeared in the west and moved towards Kinsman; people got glued to the satellite images on their hand-held internet interfaces, Amanda didn’t want to stay any longer, and Nick LeRoy came on stage and told us not to panic but that they were covering the stage equipment because of the coming storm so a little bit after 10:00 pm Amanda and I headed out to the truck (with an order of gravy fires from Ezra’s Chameleon Kitchen to eat) and then begin the drive home, staying just ahead of the storm (I did hear that Herbert Wiser Band, the festival closers, got to play a bit after the storm in the garage and that it was a good time).

If you’re up for a great time, if you want to drop in for a day, or lounge through the weekend in a tent pitched at a beautiful grain farm environment while great bands play, then periodically google “FarmFest 450 2012″ to see if Nick LeRoy has the energy and inspiration to put on the festival for the fourth year.  I hope he does.  The location is a prime spot for a festival and the bands that he’s connected with are hard-working regionals worthy of catching live.

Today president Obama proved himself to be as much a disappointment as I feared, apparently giving his approval to the backwards Keystone XL pipeline, which will secure our future in the past for the next twenty years.  Thanks man!  And I had a chance to check out Peter Pagast’s progress on his downtown mural.  In fact, I was invited to the official unveiling of the mural next Wednesday, which I’ll attend and document, so check back.  I mean, all of those “limestone blocks” you see above are painted.  That pretty much rocks.  And his figure painting is as outstanding as all of the work he created for Philadelphia.

And my own art?  Am I doing anything else but blogging?  Well, I started back as a teacher again, for my 10th year this year, thank you very much.  And the story below this one, about single use plastic bottles, is going to appear on Life Without Plastic and in the online publication Green Chicago Parent.  Thanks to both of those outlets for appreciating and further promoting my work!  And please know that all of the graphics in the article were made by me, alone, on Microsoft Publisher with the shape tools.

My commission with Riverside Hospital is ridiculous.  It’s been a crazy ordeal.  I literally first approached the organization in November of 2009, and 22 months later, after numerous submission rejections based on “outrageous content for a hospital setting” or something like that, my approved pieces have been cut down and reconfigured until now, I just hope to get something from almost two years of pursuit.  My original goal was to get local art placed in a local, multi-million dollar construction project.  Because I was willing to abandon great art, and by that I mean pieces that would draw people to the hospital, I have now given them pieces sure to put runaway elderlys to sleep.  It seems like I’ll get a few coins from the work, unless they read this first, before they send me the check.  They might decipher my tone of voice and decide to replace my originals with lazy stock designs assured to turn not a single head and incite not one honest dialogue between art and viewer.  Oh, I’m sorry.  Do I sound bittersweet?

The great news is you should keep checking back because my review of FarmFest 2011 is almost done, and it will include so many fantastic photographs along with a festival review and reviews of Chicago Farmer and The Steepwater Band and Miles Nielsen and the Rusted Hearts and also Ezra’s Chameleon Kitchen.  And I’m also working with The City of Kankakee to create a graphics campaign for one of their near-future corporation projects, which will entail the city starting an off-shore drilling corporation to help create jobs and earn much-needed tax revenue for a city currently being besieged by a 100 million dollar lawsuit from Chicago’s new mayor Rahm Emanuel in regards to some sale tax issues.  Go figure.  It’s undoubtedly a conspiracy supported by The Chicago Tribune.