Art Worlds

a photograph of Lee Godie by Steven Kagan, from Carl Hammer Gallery

Thousands of ways to live a creative life are represented in the Chicago Artists' Archive, from outsider artists like Lee Godie to Grace Lai, the diminuitive painter of construction sites, to artist Jeff Whitfield, former facilitator of the Creative Arts Program at Statesville Prison in IL.

While not as prevalent a myth now as in years past, the notion of the individual artist working alone is a fallacy in the economy of creative practice. One of my standby art references, recently reissued in a 25th anniversary edition, is Art Worlds. Written by one of my husband's heroes, social scientist Howard Becker, it describes how artists are deeply embedded in distributed networks. Artists never go it alone: they work with clients, organizations, dealers, administrators, technicians and marketers.

Any one folder of the Chicago Artists' Archive contains tens to hundreds of different approaches to creative practice. (Check the last names to see how far I have gotten in my reading: I am at M--actually Mc!) Artists representing a wide range of art worlds include Barbara Cooper, sculptor and public artist, wallpaper artisans Koessel Studios, art critic CJ Bulliet, painter of war Tom Lea, funder Bertha Masor, restorer Lido Lippi,  Colin McFrangos, poster artist or Bill Lavicka, scavenger writ large. Documents about these artists in the Chicago Artists' Archive reveal the larger network each practitioner builds and participates in while maintaining a high level of individual creativity and craftsmanship.

Print by Roger Brown, Cole Taylor Collection, SAIC

 One entry in the CAA is an article on Sydney Taylor, a director of Cole Taylor Bank. The bank built a large and idiosyncratic art collection and held exhibitions in their downtown bank. Taylor is quoted in an article from the period as saying,

After Martin Luther King was killed, we thought we could use art as a way to calm things down. There had been rioting. Buildings were burned down. It was scary. We started holding exhibitions as a way to help people understand the cultural contributions each group was making because we all were there together in the heart of the city.

This quote reminds me of the gentle power of setting a precedent, of making the creative gesture. The layers of worlds in that simple quotation—nation, city, neighborhood, bank, workers, collectors, artists, citizens—represent the strength of recognizing and utilizing existing networks as contexts for art.