Art & Chicago (intersection of tags)

What facts and figures would you like the Museum of Contemporary Art to share with the public? The museum has a webpage with various facts and figures. Data points like: 21% of the words in their collection are named “Untitled.”…

You might follow some of the top Chicago art museums on Twitter, like The @artinstitutechi or @mcachicago. But what about the other visual art organizations? I compiled a Twitter list of 49 visual art organizations in Chicago. Please feel free…

Every week I check a bookmarked Flickr search for street art Chicago. Even though I try to make the search exclude graffiti, I still end up with mostly graffiti images. Every now and then there might be something remotely interesting…

Chicago’s Picasso sculpture isn’t just for looking—it’s for sliding! Kids do it all the time, but today, I joined them. In my tie and work clothes, I climbed up and slid down. And then did it three more times. Every…

An army of caterpillars somehow got onto the median of a busy tourist street in Chicago. How was such an unusual sight discovered? Why through origami butterflies, of course! Being freshly married two weeks ago, we have about four hundred…

With the Stanley Cup in the news again as Chicago won its third Stanley Cup in six years, Chicago’s Adler Planetarium made an infographic revealing that 429,305,338 Stanley Cups stacked on top of one another would reach the Moon. What…

The Tribune Tower has many locked doors leading to secret closets. Walk down any hallway, and you are sure to encounter a locked door that leads to a mysterious place. One of these such doors is on the 14th floor…

What would celebrated architect Renzo Piano be saying in this photo? He clearly looks excited to be sharing something.

Parked and waiting was the infamous Puppet Bike. Strips of the Carina Nebula in my hand, I was looking for poles and other items to wrap the Nebula around. What great felicity to run into one of Chicago’s most famous…

Every artist has their go-to methods when creativity runs dry. Tools like sketchpads. Working in locations like coffee shops. For me one of my methods is to make artwork to place on the front of Tribune Tower. 149 rocks from…

An impressive show was put on by this year’s batch of BFA students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The expansive seventh floor of the Louis Sullivan Building on the State Street housed more than 300 artists’…

The fine art of napkins. Art that you can wipe your mouth with. The Art Institute currently has 11 napkins in their permanent collection. The height of the napkin collecting craze occured from 1983 to 1996. Nine of the eleven…

Ever want to get inside the artwork at an art museum? Now you can! Several people on Instagram and Flickr have demonstrate how they interact with artworks in museums. These seven methods are collected under the hashtag, #GetInsideTheArtInstituteofChicago. A clever…

Time is short. People are watching you. Will you have the guts to draw something fun on a foggy window on the bus or train? These questions faced me this morning as with below zero degree temperatures in Chicago. Commuters…

Unique styrofoam constructions hand-crafted by artists to support the safe transit of art. A delicate sculptural bust is transformed from a bronze head to a rectangular box. All the space around the head is extended out to conform to cube.…

Two years ago the Art Institute of Chicago had 3,976 artworks on display. Now they have 4,715 on display. The Art Institute has a great website that shows their entire collection. You can even search for which artworks are on…

Transform the fun of tourist postcards into something beyond their normal function. Buy a tourist postcard and then fold it into a paper origami and leave it at the same postcard rack in the store. Make sure to leave the…

Every day Flickr ranks the top 500 photos posted to popular photo sharing service. 1.4 million photos are posted to the service every day, so to be ranked in the top 500 is quite an achievement. In 2014 alone, I…

You encounter what appears to be a wall of notes written by a crazy person. 23 sticky notes arranged on a grid by a seat on the train. Many reflective questions that question our perspective of life. Questions of self-awareness…

The opportunity: The Art Institute of Chicago was asking for “surrealist objects” last week as a promotion for the current Magritte exhibit. The objects will be selected by the curator of the Magritte show and will be displayed in the…

One part finger monster. One part white-out. Inspired by Magritte’s surrealism exhibit at the Art Institute. Take all these together and what do you have? The “White-out Monster” who likes to paint things white. Yesterday I wrote up an interview…

Many of Chicago’s iconic buildings are white today, because of an unknown artist working today. This artist has managed to keep his identity relatively unknown for the past hundreds of years. He’s also managed to stay alive for the past…

If you had to make a surrealist sculpture only with office supplies and a finger monster, what would you make? Walking around the 14th floor of the Tribune Tower with a finger monster wedged onto my finger, I weighed my…

A fog crawls over Chicago, photographers slide their cameras out to capture the gray beast. Chicagoist selected 14 photos of today’s fog in Chicago. The second featured image is my photo of the Water Tower pumping station. While riding the…

The Art Institute of Chicago recently “restored” Gustave Caillebotte’s painting, “Paris Street; Rainy Day” (1877) Wow, the umbrellas are really blue now. They almost feel like alien hovercrafts. Perhaps Gustave Caillebotte was predicting an alien invasion on the streets of…

The Art Institute released an app that explores nine artworks on display in the modern wing. Each artwork has several mini factoids and videos uncovering specific details about the background behind the work. The free app, “A Closer Look in…

Make a photo available via a Creative Commons license allows it to run wild free on the internet. You’ll never know what will happen. In 2007 I shot this HDR image of a tugboat on the Chicago River. Accidentally using…

I’m extremely honored that the Yahoo Creative Team asked that one of my photos be included in the 10-year Flickr anniversary video! Here’s their request: I immediately thought they would want to use one of my most popular photos, like…

The clothespin artist stands at the front steps of the Art Institute of Chicago in the summer of 1994. My fellow college freshman friends and I approach this man selling clothespin necklaces and tshirts with simple clothespin silhouettes. While signing…

Magic covers the ground with the first snow of the year. Everyone is an artist with boots acting like printing plates on the fresh white sheet. Creating prints in the ground, we look back to admire our work. Start a…

This is a very interesting call for artists. As a public spaces artist who does not want concealed firearms to be legal in Chicago, I’m going to be giving this proposal some serious thought. If you are pro-gun, I’d like…