October 25, 4-7PM
4th Ward Project Space: 5338 S Kimbark Ave
2. HOLLY MURKERSON: rough edge
October 23, 6-9PM
65GRAND: 3252 W North Ave
3. Kevin Glass: A Little Song in the Dark
October 23, 6-9PM
Flatline Gallery: 1925 N Milwaukee Ave
October 24, 5-8PM
Prairie: 2055 W Cermak Rd
Work by: ASMA, Justin Chance, Peggy Chiang, Nick D’Alessandro, Joel Dean, Ficus Interfaith, Bea Fremderman, ektor garcia, Max Guy, Emily Jones, Manal Kara, Craig Jun Li, André Magaña, Jenine Marsh, Isabelle Frances McGuire, Anais Morales, Alberto Ortega Trejo, Nick Raffel, Amina Ross, Kira Scerbin, Micah Schippa-Wildfong, José Taymani, Katz Tepper, Liz Vitlin, Connie Wilson, agustine zegers
October 22, 7-10PM
Out of Office: 3336 W Lawrence Ave, Suite 301
Work by: Bethany Austhof, Chris Collins, Jared Christopher Kelley, Doug Rosman
Hey Chicago, submit your events here.
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What can a handful of dirt tell you about where you live? At ACRE Projects in Chicago, the Bad at Sports crew joins ceramic artist E. Saffronia Downing amid her exhibition Pressed Flower to talk about wild clay, the material memory of cities, and what happens when people are invited to mail you their dirt.
For Call for Clay, Downing issued open invitations in 2023 and 2025 for participants to send foraged clay, along with letters about where it came from. Published by the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, the resulting book brings together 40 contributors from 19 states and three countries. Part correspondence project, part material archive, it is a portrait of the places we carry around with us—even when they arrive in a Ziploc bag.
The conversation moves from Chicago’s common bricks and a stream beneath Downing’s family home in Baltimore to a mysterious flower-or-gear pressed into an upstate New York sidewalk. There are hand-pinched beads that are also seeds, ceramic tiles embedded in gallery walls, the environmental ethics of taking dirt from the ground, and the industrial operations hidden behind the humble bag of studio clay. Add some kiln-shelf anxiety, colored-pencil drawing on fired ceramics, and an inconclusive effort to determine whether everything is sculpture, and you have a pretty good afternoon at Bad at Sports.
Names Dropped:
Saffronia Downing – https://e-saffronia.net/
Ryan Peter Miller – https://ryanpetermiller.com/about
Duncan MacKenzie – https://badatsports.com/broadcast-staff/duncan-mackenzie/
Brian Andrews – https://www.brianandrews.org/
Katherine (Kitty) Ross – https://www.saic.edu/profiles/faculty/katherine-ross
Amber Ginsburg – https://www.amberginsburg.com/
Lisa Frank – https://lisafrank.com/
Pressed Flower – https://acreresidency.org/index.php/exhibition/pressed-flower
Call for Clay – https://i-n-g-a.com/products/call-for-clay-by-e-saffronia-downing
ACRE Projects – https://acreresidency.org/
School of the Art Institute of Chicago — Ceramics – https://www.saic.edu/ceramics
Bad Water Gallery (Field Dug Over listing) – https://locatearts.org/exhibitions/knoxville/field-dug-over
John Michael Kohler Arts Center – https://www.jmkac.org/
Bad at Sports / Bad at Sportscenter – https://badatsports.com/
Lumpen Radio (WLPN-LP) – https://lumpenradio.com/
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago – https://mcachicago.org/
Wissahickon Valley Park – https://fow.org/
Mason Stains — Mason Color Works – https://www.masoncolor.com/mason-stains
Trapper Keeper — Mead – https://www.mead.com/trapper-keeper-details/
Google Maps – https://www.google.com/maps
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October 17, 5-8PM
Fourtune House: 4410 S Cottage Grove Ave
2. Dana DeGiulio & Matthew Girson: Paintings that have the look of paintings that are looked at
October 17, 2-3PM
Material: 2025 W Belmont Ave
3. Jonathan Michael Castillo: Immigrant Owned
October 16, 6-9PM
Oh Art Foundation: 3314 S Morgan St
4. Hermetic: A Group Exhibition
October 16, 6-10PM
Evoke Gallery: 3040 N Central Ave
Work by: Alexander Trotter, Collette Ayscue, Jiaming You, Neal Vandenbergh, October Sharify, Sam Loree, and Sydfalls
5. Isaiah Lee: A Thief in the Night
October 16, 6-9PM
crosswalk: 1856 N Richmond St
Hey Chicago, submit your events here.
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Duncan MacKenzie and Jesse Malmed sit down with artist Tony Lewis and Bosco Bae, brother of the late Chicago artist Gregory Bae (1986–2021), for a moving, funny, and candid conversation recorded live at PATRON Gallery in Chicago.
The occasion is Let’s Go Exploring!, a two-person exhibition bringing together work by longtime friends and studio mates Tony Lewis and Gregory Bae. But what begins as a conversation about an exhibition quickly becomes something more complicated: an exploration of friendship, loss, memory, artistic responsibility, and the strange business of keeping an artist’s work alive after their death.
Tony and Bosco recount the collective efforts to preserve Gregory’s work, from moving the contents of his studio and organizing the artist-led archival project CV to making curatorial decisions that Gregory himself might not have agreed with. What should survive? What gets exhibited? Who has the authority to decide? And how can an archive remain experimental, generous, and alive rather than becoming a monument to a fixed history?
The group considers the ethics of recreating artworks, a bonsai that might be both alive and doomed, Tony’s enormous graphite basketball-court drawing, the politics of Asian American identity, and the sometimes extraordinary generosity of Chicago’s artistic community.
The exhibition’s title comes from the final Calvin and Hobbes comic strip.
Name Drops and links:
- Tony Lewis – https://patrongallery.com/artist/tonylewis/cv
- Bosco Bae – https://boscobae.com/
- Gregory Bae – https://patrongallery.com/artist/gregorybae
- Josh Dihle – https://www.joshdihle.com/
- Robert Chase Heishman – https://www.robertchaseheishman.com/
- Mika Horibuchi – https://patrongallery.com/artist/mikahoribuchi
- Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes) – https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes
- PATRON Gallery – https://patrongallery.com/
- Let’s Go Exploring! – https://patrongallery.com/exhibitions
- Chicago Works: Gregory Bae, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago – https://mcachicago.org/whats-on/events/talk-24-7-365-a-roundtable-on-the-life-and-work-of-gregory-bae/
- Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago – https://mcachicago.org/
- School of the Art Institute of Chicago – https://www.saic.edu/
- This Thing We Call Art: Gregory Bae – https://www.thisthingwecallart.com/archive/gregory-bae
- Two of a Kind: At Patron, Tony Lewis and Gregory Bae Explore How Friendship Impacts One’s Artwork, Chicago Reader – https://patrongallery.com/press/item797/Two-of-a-kind-At-Patron-Tony-Lewis-and-Gregory-Bae-explore-how-friendship-impacts-ones-artwork
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Brian Andrews, Duncan MacKenzie, and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with Chicago-area artist Paul Nudd at Spudnik Press, surrounded by the work of the 1st International Milwaukee Riso Invitational.
Nudd has spent more than two decades producing a gloriously strange universe of hairy organisms, mutant bodies, psychedelic biological forms, and wonderfully unsettling surfaces. His work moves between painting, drawing, printmaking, video, and, most recently, ceramics. But beneath all the slime, crust, and occasional bodily horror is an artist deeply committed to experimentation, collaboration, and the pleasures of making things.
The conversation begins with Nudd’s long relationship with Chicago’s printmaking community, including his legendary 2009 residency at Spudnik Press with cartoonist Onsmith, where the pair produced more than a thousand prints—and apparently sold none of them.
Nudd describes why he loves Riso’s imperfect surfaces, the magic of working with master printers, his affection for Chicago Imagism, and the importance of preserving uncertainty in the studio. The hosts also investigate whether Nudd’s work is actually gross or not.
The second half finds Nudd reflecting on the unexpected pleasures of ceramics, his work as an elementary school art teacher, creative attention, and the increasingly porous boundaries between his studio, garden, kitchen, compost heap, and classroom.
Nudd’s show opens Nov. 6th, 2026, at Western Exhibition! https://westernexhibitions.com/upcoming-exhibitions/
Recorded at Spudnik Press, Chicago, in conjunction with the closing of the 1st International Milwaukee Riso Invitational.
Name drops and links
Paul Nudd – https://westernexhibitions.com/artist/paul-nudd/
Onsmith – https://www.spudnikpress.org/people/onsmith/
Chris Flynn – https://cflynnprints.com/
Jim Nutt – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Nutt
Peter Saul – https://www.moma.org/artists/5178-peter-saul
Chloe Perkis – https://www.chloe-perkis.com/
Big Black – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Black
Spudnik Press – https://www.spudnikpress.org/
Western Exhibitions – https://westernexhibitions.com/
Hoofprint – https://www.hoofprintchicago.com/
Marz Community Brewing – https://www.marzbrewery.com/
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October 10, 3-4PM
The Labyrinth Club: 3658 N Pulaski Rd
2. Tara Sabini and Jeremy Plotkin Wong: Pleasure Spread
October 9, 5-9PM
Oliva Gallery: 3816 W Armitage Ave
October 10, 4-7PM
Woman Made Gallery: 1332 S Halsted St
Work by: Pánne Ally, Loraine Anderson, Laura Balombini, Jane Barrow, Marian Berg, Lindsey Berkun, Carrie Betlyn-Eder, Mary Ann Bucklin, Kathy Castleton, Laura Cerf-Dahl, Margaret Colarelli, Marie Corfield, Susan Fecho, Viktoria Ford, Tammi Franke, Amanda Freymann, Anne-Bridget Gary, Mary Gingrich, Shari Gullo, Pam Hamilton, Deborah Hirshfield, Pamela Hobbs, Ellen Holtzblatt, Judith Huacuja, Frederica Huff, Mama Coco, Jude Kallok, Ruth A. Keitz, Katherine Kraus, Phyllis Lear, Sylvia Lorraine, Darcy Lynn, Maureen May, Angela McElwain, Erin McNamara, Karen Mosbacher, Karen Musgrave, Moni Olguin, Linda Popp, Cherry Rahn, Jane Rieso, Paulette Schermerhorn, Beth Shadur, Carol Spindel, Paola Tavoletti, Mary Jane Tenerelli, Janet Tsakis
4. Daniel Hojnacki: Continuous Exchange
October 10, 1-4PM
Tiger Strikes Asteroid Chicago: 2233 S Throop St, 4th Floor, #419
5. SCA Public Program: Ei Arakawa-Nash
October 12, 6-7PM
Fullerton Hall, Art Institute of Chicago: 111 S Michigan Ave
Hey Chicago, submit your events here.
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What makes a painting worth saving? What happens when the image in your head refuses to become the image on your panel? And why does everybody want another fox?
This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie, Brian Andrews, and Ryan Peter Miller welcome Chicago painter Mari Eastman for a conversation recorded at Spudnik Press during its Riso Print Fest. Eastman takes us through the pleasures and frustrations of painting, from translating a beloved fox into a woodblock print to rescuing abandoned paintings with techniques borrowed from Bob Ross. They explore fashion photography, the Chicago figurative painting scene, the peculiar intimacy of appropriated images, and the elusive point where faithful representation can lose the feeling that made an image irresistible in the first place.
Name Drops:
- Mari Eastman – bombonprojects.com
- Ben Butler – benbutlerart.com
- Shannon Stratton – shannonraestratton.com
- Edvard Munch – nga.gov
- Kerry James Marshall – nga.gov
- Paul McCarthy – hauserwirth.com
- Tyson Reeder – canadanewyork.com
- Carl Baratta – carlbaratta.com
- Bob Ross – bobross.com
- Rebecca Morris – bortolamigallery.com
- Richard Estes – nga.gov
- Karen Kilimnik – metmuseum.org
- Richard Prince – gagosian.com
- Elizabeth Peyton – gagosian.com
- Margaux Williamson – bradleyertaskiran.com
- Leanne Shapton – leanneshapton.com
- School of the Art Institute of Chicago – saic.edu
- Spudnik Press – spudnikpress.org
- Process/Process – process-process.com
- Bombon Projects – bombonprojects.com