Western Avenue Series

Mile 14: 16th-Congress Streets

This sketch is a part of my Western Avenue Series, through which I'll be making 24 watercolor paintings, one to document each mile of Western Avenue, in Chicago.  I started this project because while it is not considered to be among the most “beautiful” of Chicago’s streets, Western Avenue is a perfect place to document the humanness of Chicago, the positive and the negative. In the words of Stuart Dybek, "Western, with apologies to State Street, is a great street,  Unlike State, it is a street that goes to the interior, the heart of the city, as it glides and glows through a United Nations of neighborhoods."  Check back next Monday to see the painting completed based on this sketch.

 

The Express Auto Repair shop featured in the painting seems typical of the businesses which populate the surrounding blocks.  The street is more densely lined with businesses and apartments than some portions of the Avenue, but still does not seem entirely geared toward pedestrians.  The focus remains on the car with fast moving traffic, generously proportioned streets, and car repair shops. 

I was curious about the Center for General and Applied Education, which is located on this stretch of Western.  They describe themselves in this way, "We are a special educational center where we want you to learn everything there is to learn so you
could become:

A versatile, knowledgeable individual.


We can do this because we sift, sort and integrate knowledge, separating it from the minutia, the 
redundancies and the excessive elaboration to the point of boredom, so the essence of our collective 
human knowledge gets passed on to you."

The Empty Bottle, a lovely place to see music because it is fantastically intimate, is also located on this stretch of the avenue.  I've seen Harlem Shakes, Noah and the Whale, and The Mountain Goats at the Empty Bottle, all delightful shows!

Featured Artist

Martha Bleidner

Martha Bleidner has been creating all her: life, drawing, writing, making jewelry and crafts. For her, it's all about colors, textures, shapes, and a little bit of fantasy. She's never been able to settle for just one style or genre or technique. She finds that there's always something new to try, or different techniques to merge. This led Martha to spend a number of years as a professional needlecraft and craft designer. With a partner, Celia Lange Designs, Martha designed needlecraft and craft projects for a number of different publishers, including Leisure Arts, The Needlecraft Shop, House of White Birches, and Workbasket. She most enjoyed projects which were the ones which "pushed the envelope", combining techniques from different sources, such as working embroidery stitches over a background of needlepoint stitching, or adding dimensional craft elements to a needlecraft project. This love for pushing the boundaries and mixing elements means that she is always exploring new directions in her art and her crafting.

What attracts you to the fantastical in creating art?
     I've always loved reading fantasy, mythology, folk and fairytales, and science fiction, since they all invite my imagination out to play. My father was a scientist, so I learned early on how to analyze what's around me and think in a linear fashion, but I also learned to take science "with a grain of salt". Too many times I've heard some "expert" pronounce that something doesn't exist or isn't possible, and then some years later the it turns out that the "extinct" fish still swims in the ocean or the "impossible" particle has been located. So I try to keep an open mind and allow the fantastical to be a part of my reality, and incorporate it into my art.

Where do you find the inspiration for your landscape paintings?
     Over the years I've been fortunate enough to travel a lot, and I've always been drawn to nature. Whenever I see something that catches my eye, I take a mental "snapshot". This gives me a sort of "impressionist" version of what I've seen, rather than the "reality" version of a true snapshot (although I do use those as well, sometimes). Then, when I want to paint, I use a combination of one or more mental and/or physical snapshots, mix them with a good dose of imagination, and add an element of letting the working medium guide me.
    Sometimes I have one thing in mind, and the paint just insists on leading me somewhere else. For example, I recently started a seascape, but what I was envisioning and what I was producing weren't on the same page at all. So I stepped back and stopped fighting to make it a seascape... it ended up being a really cool background to a still life of an orchid-like flower in a pot... not looking like anything else I'd ever done before... I still have no idea why it ended up that way, but I like it.

Are there new themes or mediums you anticipate exploring in your upcoming work?
     Always! I'm notorious for wanting to try everything I see. I've started exploring acrylics and experimenting with gel mediums and interference colors. There are so many wonderful effects you can get with color intensity, texture and color shifts. I'm currently waiting for a back order of Inktense blocks so I can begin to experiment with the effects of using ink rather than paint as a water medium, and I've also started some collage pieces using a variety of techniques that I originally used for scrapbooking, but applying them in very different ways.
    I suspect, though, that I will long continue to work with watercolor as one of my primary media. It's one of the handful of methods of expressing myself that always seems to have something different for me to achieve. And since my styles range from semi-realism to fully abstract, that says a lot!
     As for new themes, I have more themes lined up and waiting impatiently in my mind than I know what to do with! At this point, I have my art supplies set up in three different locations, and have at least five or six pieces going at any one time. Usually which themes are expressed in which location depends on the supplies I have there, but I have been know to carry a partly finished piece to another location just to finish with a different paint or brush or glaze or whatever. I guess my motto should be, "have art, will travel".

Many thanks to Martha for sharing her lovely work and happy birthday Martha!

What do you think of her paintings?

Western Avenue Series

Mile 13: 25th-16th Streets
This painting is a part of my Western Avenue Series, through which I'll be making 24 watercolor paintings, one to document each mile of Western Avenue, in Chicago.  I started this project because while it is not considered to be among the most “beautiful” of Chicago’s streets, Western Avenue is a perfect place to document the humanness of Chicago, the positive and the negative. In the words of Stuart Dybek, "Western, with apologies to State Street, is a great street,  Unlike State, it is a street that goes to the interior, the heart of the city, as it glides and glows through a United Nations of neighborhoods."  Check back next Monday to see a post about the next mile of Western.

This painting features one of the modest homes which line the streets of Pilsen.  This small house is nestled among the larger and more commercial buildings, which line Western, but it certainly typical of the urban fabric in this area.  The entrance of these homes are typically a full story above the exposed basement, which offers the opportunity for small gardens to flourish below the street level and gems to be hidden out of the view of the unobservant passerby.  


Click here to purchase this painting.


What do you think of these Pilsen homes?

Featured Artist

Jaime Perry
Jaime Perry is a 35 year old mom and artist. Jaime specialises in oils; portraits, landscapes, still lives and ACEOs. She many painting styles; surrealism, realism, & impressionism are my favorites. She can also do modern, abstract, and will create custom paintings.

What interests you about the ACEO (Art Cards) format?
I have only recently discovered the ACEO world. It allowed me to go through some smaller work from numerous sketch pads and get those out there. Before I offered Aceos in my shop, I had mostly very expensive large oil paintings. This left me open to only a small market of buyers, and very few sales. The Aceo format allows me to open up to collectors who can't afford, or who don't have room for a major art investment. I love that they are sought out and collected. I can get my work out to a much larger audience and share my talent with more people, what's not to like? I have sold 3 since I started offering them in June.

Where did you find the inspiration for your pin up girl series?
I have been on a pursuit since my teens to make a living with the talent given to me. In the summer of 2000 I started an apprenticeship at a tattoo shop, in the hopes that would be the answer to making a living from my art. As well as learning the art of tattooing, also tried my hand at designing tattoos to sell to other shops. The pin up girls were a part of that. I drew several girls, some from magazines some from my imagination, in a simple black line form. I then arranged them on a large sheet and attempted to sell the whole piece of flash. The original stayed in my portfolio for years. When I discovered Aceos, I decided to give my girls a new start. I cut them down to the proper size and mounted them on card stock. I have always loved the old pin up girl style, and I enjoyed drawing them very much.

Are there are particular themes or mediums you'd like to explore in future work?
I am always trying new things and keeping my mind open to new styles. I don't want to be stuck in an artistic box. I have always loved sculpture and pottery. I will be able to pursue that avenue once my family is settled and own a home. That way I will be able to have a kiln, potters wheel, and room to work. I would also love to get a handle on watercolors. They have always been my weak point. One day I hope to conquer that medium and move on to bigger things. I will never know everything in art, but I will never stop trying to learn all that I can. I have even started to teach myself to sew. My philosophy is if it can be done by human hands, there is no reason I can't learn to do it.

Thank you much to Jaime for sharing her work.

What do you think of Jaime's paintings and drawings?

Western Avenue Series

Mile 13: 25th-16th Streets

This sketch is a part of my Western Avenue Series, through which I'll be making 24 watercolor paintings, one to document each mile of Western Avenue, in Chicago.  I started this project because while it is not considered to be among the most “beautiful” of Chicago’s streets, Western Avenue is a perfect place to document the humanness of Chicago, the positive and the negative. In the words of Stuart Dybek, "Western, with apologies to State Street, is a great street,  Unlike State, it is a street that goes to the interior, the heart of the city, as it glides and glows through a United Nations of neighborhoods."  Check back next Monday to see the painting completed based on this sketch.

This stretch of Western travels into the Pilsen neighborhood, a place that has long been home to immigrants. In the late 19th century Pilsen was inhabited by Czech immigrants (Plzeň is the fourth largest city in what is now the Czech Republic).  Later, the Czechs were replaced by the Germans, who had settled there first with the Irish in the mid-19th century. In the mid-late 20th centeury there was an increasing Mexican-American presence, in 1962-63 when there was a great spurt in the numbers of Mexican-Americans in Pilsen due to the destruction of the neighborhood west of Halsted between Roosevelt and Taylor Streets to create room for the construction of the University of Illinois at Chicago.  Latinos became the majority in 1970 when they surpassed the Slavic population.  Famed author Stuart Dybek hails from Pilsen. 

Many of the new residents to the neighborhood are not Hispanic and it is projected that the neighborhood will continue to become more diversified in the years ahead.   Some local advocacy groups have formed urging the neighborhood's alderman to curtail gentrification to preserve the Mexican-American cultural and demographic dominance. 

The neighborhood is home to one of Chicago's largest art districts, and the National Museum of Mexican Art. St Adalbert's is a dominate feature of Pilsen skyline, as well as the murals which are prominently featured in the neighborhood. The history of the murals is often misspoken of as a purely Mexican cultural type. The original murals in Pilsen along 16th Street started as a cooperative effort between Slavs and Mexicans when the neighborhood was undergoing change. If one looks closely one finds amongst the latter Mexican images the earlier ones which are decidedly non-Mexican and include storks, scenic European farms, and lipizzaner horses.

My personal favorites in Pilsen include the National Museum of Mexican Art (free and fantastic) and the Green BLT sandwich at the Honky Tonk Restaurant.  I'm also very fond of the modest but well proportioned wood frame homes of the neighborhood.  Many of these homes reveal the a bit of the city's history with exposed basements, which used to be first floor before the city raised the level of the houses in the 1860s and 1870s.

What do you love about the Pilsen Nieghborhood?

Featured Artist

Phuong Duong
Phuong is a painter of still life, using oil on canvas. Her paintings are spontaneous and emotionally charged. Though she is not a very prolific painter, she hopes that this may be made up for, by the depth and richness of her interpretation. She admits that naturally she is quite a closed book, described as “still waters”. Paint allows her freedom from consciousness.

Austerity, Seniority, Frivolity and Fertility, oil on canvas, 76 x 101 cm, 2010

Self-imposition, loneliness and heartbreak.

Last Bloom, oil on canvas, 60 x 80 cm, 2010

There's the Jeff Buckley lyric "It's never over, she's the tear that hangs in your soul forever".  Mary, whom I met in hospital, represents that feeling.  Sometimes in life you look for angels and a lot of emotions about that time are wrapped up in her memory.  She had written me a card a few months after we had met, with great difficulty.  Her writing was shaky and frail and tailed off from the cramp rendering chemo as she wrote about her hair falling out.  That evokation remains a stubborn memory.  It is deeply personal, the things you can't let go that becomes a part of your being and subconscious.

Blue, oil on canvas, 60 x 90 cm, 2010

Blue is the most innocent of paintings.  It is optimistic and simple. Comme c'est difficile d'etre simple.

A candlestick, vase with flowers and apples, oil on canvas, 76 x 101 cm, 2011

     I was thinking a lot about yellow and light.  I was thinking a lot about Van Gogh as I always do for inspiration.  This was a painting responding to the artist and his influence.
     I paint because it can feel like it only means something to me and that's a precious thing indeed.  I like that I can go my merry or downbeat way with complete freedom.
      Painting is a practice of natural instinct, memory and urgency.

Many thanks for Phuong for sharing her delightful oil paintings.

What do you think of Phuong's work?

Western Avenue Series

Mile 12: 34th-25th Street

This painting is a part of my Western Avenue Series, through which I'll be making 24 watercolor paintings, one to document each mile of Western Avenue, in Chicago.  I started this project because while it is not considered to be among the most “beautiful” of Chicago’s streets, Western Avenue is a perfect place to document the humanness of Chicago, the positive and the negative. In the words of Stuart Dybek, "Western, with apologies to State Street, is a great street,  Unlike State, it is a street that goes to the interior, the heart of the city, as it glides and glows through a United Nations of neighborhoods."  Check back next Monday to see a post about the next mile of Western.

This painting is of a stretch of Western Avenue just south of 31st Street.  From a bridge which crosses the South Branch of the Chicago river one can see a building owned by Domino Sugar (my second Domino Sugar Factory painting).  This scene reminds me of a previous painting I made of the Finkel Steel Factory.  From this vantage point, one sees the serenity of the river, the industry which remains in Chicago, and the grace of our skyline in the background.  These scenes, where nature, industry, and large scale architecture mingle always strike me as unconventionally beautiful.


Click here to purchase this painting.

Where do you find unconventional beauty in the city?

Featured Artist

Maggie Flatley
Maggie Flatley is a painter and a mom. She has taken art classes over the years, but only recently started the "daily painting". Painting adjusts her view of color, light and beauty in life. It transforms the simplest things into works of art and feeds the soul.

What inspired you to begin “daily painting?”
I stumbled upon the Daily Painters movement last year. I had always wanted to paint larger oils and watercolors, which is very time consuming.  As a result, months would go by where I never touched a paintbrush. It was very frustrating, until Daily Painter came along. Smaller paintings, done alla prima, (all at one time), were a great fit for me. It was a way to improve and reinvigorate the skills I had learned over the years.  You can't help but become a better painter.

Many of your paintings feature botanicals, are you an avid gardener?
No garden, sadly, just some irises, hydrangea. 

Are there places you day dream of traveling in order to gather inspiration for paintings?
When I win the lottery, you can find me by calling, 1-800-Tuscany!

Many thanks to Maggie for sharing her painting work here!

What do you think of Maggie's work?