This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page Newcity Art by | March 14 Installation view of “Dance This Mess Around,” 2024 If you haven’t heard of the gallery Patient Info yet and maybe once you meet someone who knows they’ll invite you That’s probably the best way to find out about the many artist-run spaces in Chicago These semi-underground art scenes flourish in the tributary rivers of graduates coming from the academic powerhouse institutions that dot Chicago like the sport pepper garnishing on a fully garden-dragged hot dog The Hairy Who and the Chicago Imagists were all connected to higher education Their academic roots lend an acerbic edge to their witticisms and the constellation of new artists Richard Hull has assembled at Patient Info follow in these footsteps The Chicago Imagists could be said to have thumbed their nose at the New York art world and one could say Patient Info does the same to the idea of a white cube The gallery itself feels like something from the grotesque world of a Hairy Who painting It’s a perfectly preserved late-seventies family-owned dermatologist office complete with linoleum mis-matching fluorescent light tones and a perfectly intact operation chair Unflattering posters warn about aging skin and original information pamphlets yellow on the waiting room tables Patient Info might be the perfect place for Richard Hull to have curated a show that clearly has its ancestral ties to a Chicago movement which had an overbearing fascination with skin defects installation view of “Untitled” at Patient Info/Photo: Journie Cirdain Hiding tucked next to a large plant in the waiting room of Patient info and jarring nicely with a poster that says “The Danger Signs of Skin Cancer,” is “Yellow Girl,” a painting by George Cohen who was a founding member of Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art and an important member of the Monster Roster movement adds a surrealist touch of monstrosity to his figure of a red-lipped bright yellow woman with hard little round breasts who’s standing in front of The Art Institute of Chicago owns eleven George Cohen pieces Richard Hull found this one in a thrift shop sensuality might be at the core in “Dance This Mess Around.” But not through the blue light allure of L.A.’s poreless perfection or through a New York-style solipsistic power flex these paintings find private pleasure in the de-skilled technique of the outsider artist whose passion drives creation despite the threat of obscurity Richard Hull hasn’t gathered this group of artists together to lull you into a false sense of security in beauty surrealist sketches and tertiary color choices defy the commodification of exact description installation view of “Yellow Girl” at Patient Info/Photo: Journie Cirdain The show’s voluptuousness is expressed here in the bodily a man looks at himself in a bathroom mirror over the tops of an impressive Morandi-style collection of bottles and sundries Muddy colors swirl in paint mixed directly onto the canvas push-the-papers-off-the-desk-and-go-for-it kind of mad dash into wet-on-wet color mixing barely-there forms whisper to each other in “Strawberry Series” by Nour Malas and “Search Party” by Elizabeth Loftus but it’s about as far as you can get from odalisque style of sex appeal a bright pink man ecstatically dances with cut-out swans nude Jesus lets it all hang out in front of the American flag in “Jesus comforts a fat boy” by Sara Bastress Owen Fu’s violet blob-like figure in “I Cut Myself” color codes nicely with Yaismel Alba Garib’s more explicit (and materially fascinating) “Studio 815.” Yoohee Chang’s “Untitled” has a mottled claw of a hand pincering a clock reminding us of the doomed reality of this short and brutish life In “Untitled” Jacob Mattingly reinvents the heroic skeleton of a horse using the bare minimum of cartoon bones probably an honest take on the average ability to guess what is going on underneath all of this subcutaneous fat and muscle in “Yellow Girl” we simply revel in the fleshy ridges oil paint makes when it’s raked by the firm bristles of an animal hair brush There are some eerie similarities between the broad sweep of today’s political landscape and the environment that fostered the original Chicago Imagists the GI Bill paid for veterans to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago while the hypocritically bright pop colors hard hair helmets and glossy shiny media of the 1950s and sixties preached America’s moral and physical perfections and proxy wars between ideological enemies combined with sweeping demonstrations against social inequality and injustice at home and its walled inner circle of wealth may seem like an unlikely place to foster true punk rockery But if any market could exemplify the truth seekers whose embodied poetics champion the authentic “Dance This Mess Around,” curated by Richard Hull LITTLE ROCK — Several contestants with ties to the Tri-Lakes Edition coverage area received awards in the Miss Arkansas Scholarship Pageant which culminated June 15 with the crowning of.. This document may not be reprinted without the express written permission of Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Material from the Associated Press is Copyright © 2025 audio and/or video material shall not be published rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium Neither these AP materials nor any portion thereof may be stored in a computer except for personal and noncommercial use The AP will not be held liable for any delays errors or omissions therefrom or in the transmission or delivery of all or any part thereof or for any damages arising from any of the foregoing The historic Western-style melodrama is in rehearsals and comes to the stage in July “Why a melodrama?” posed Valley Performers President/Director Ruth Stuart “In 2020 we performed a one act melodrama and our audiences really enjoyed the genre asking when we might do another,” she told News Of The Area “This next production still allows audiences to “boo” the villain and “yee-haw” our hero we’d performed an English-style melodrama the last time so we thought an American Western would be fun and give our audiences some great costume ideas for themselves to wear to the performances,” she said The Nambucca based Valley Performers group is adamant about keeping live theatre thriving in the region “There is nothing more satisfying than bringing a smile to the face of our audiences “Last year our audiences really enjoyed the theatre restaurant style plays we performed with Spy Club and Gangster’s Ball “The Macksville Ex-Services Club is a great venue and so we looked for another theatre restaurant play.” The play they’ve chosen allows them to offer a night of fun and comedy “People love to laugh and escape the world for a few hours “That’s also why we encourage our audiences to dress up to really get them in the zone and have a bit of fun “Pure entertainment with some audience interaction with a great mouth-watering meal makes it a complete package and four performances are at night on July 14 and dressing up for the occasion which can be shared with friends then they would love to be involved as an audience member for our theatre restaurant shows,” said Ruth Valley Performers have members who have been involved in entertainment for over 30 years “Live theatre started in the Valley in 1956 and is still running strong “For our group entertainment is the ‘name of the game’ and Valley Performers sure do deliver; we have a great following from repeat audiences from near and far.” For more information visit the Valley Performers Facebook page and website in this browser for the next time I comment Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value"