Last Wednesday, I attended a screening of a documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop, which opens in Chicago tomorrow, April 30th, at the Landmark Century Cinema. The film chronicles the unlikely friendships forged between a kooky amateur filmmaker named Thierry Guetta and certain high-profile members of the graffiti underground—most notably Banksy, a notoriously elusive British graffiti artist…
Our top five picks for things to do this week: David Cromer does Streetcar … Craig Ferguson does funny … John Lydon does scalding … and more
URBAN OUTFITTER: Fresh off the Whitney Biennial, the artist will show his porcelain collages at the Art Chicago satellite fair NEXT
PAIR PLAY: We talk to the pair about the perils of Gotham City and of bringing Tennessee Williams’s seminal steam bath of madness, sex, and Southern discomfort to Glencoe.
Conceived by J. C. Steinbrunner, an artist, and Tom MacDonald, the owner of The Bluebird, The Salon Series is in part a response to the weak economy. But it’s also a reaction against typical gallery culture: How can artists show their work outside of the gallery system? How to you get people to talk about art in a different way?…
The pianist Laurence Hobgood is perhaps best known as the long-time collaborator and accompanist of the singer Kurt Elling, in equal measure for his sterling keyboard work and ingenious small-group arrangements. Last year, Hobgood put out the tremendous solo/duo album, When the Heart Dances, with the legendary bassist Charlie Haden; but for this trip back to Chicago he’ll lead a sextet of old local friends, including the saxophonists John Wojciechowski and Pat Mallinger…
“I don’t feel that nervous until the theatre starts to fill up . . . and then I start to panic,” said my friend, who wrote two of the sketches in “Wait, It Gets Better,” a show that recently played at Donny’s Skybox Theater, one of the venues for Second City’s Training Center. I saw the show a couple Fridays ago, and, watching him greet friends in the ticket line, I felt his pain…
Born in Chicago’s Michael Reese Hospital in 1950, Edward Hirsch turned 60 this year—which means he had finally run out of excuses for not putting together a collection of verse culled from his seven books of poetry. “I couldn’t say I was too young anymore for a book of selected poems,” says Hirsch…
POCKET GUIDE: A cultural short-list for May, in order of buzz
Our top five picks for things to do this week: 22 Years from Home … Natalie Merchant, Corinne Bailey Rae … beer, booze, and books … free stuff
