11/10/2014 The Best of Chicago’s MDW Art Fair: Cat Taxidermy, Homemade Tarot Cards, and Fiberglass Icebergs

http://hyperallergic.com/60210/the-best-of-chicagos-mdw-art-fair-cat-taxidermy-tarot-and-interactive-icebergs/ 1/9

The Best of Chicago’s MDW Art Fair:Cat Taxidermy, Tarot, and InteractiveIcebergsby Alicia Eler on November 13, 2012

Mana Contemporary (Image via Mana)

CHICAGO — MDW is not an art fair focused on sales and bringing in big-name collectors. Infact, it’s quite the opposite.

Co-founded and co-directed by threewalls, Roots & Culture, Document, and Public MediaInstitute, and run entirely collaboratively, MDW offers artists, curators, writers, and anyoneinvolved or interested in the alternative artist-run space scene an opportunity to meet, greet,and show their work outside of the usual gallery settings. The majority of booths and tableswere run by Chicago artists, but there were a couple out-of-town visitors. Plug Projects fromKansas City, Missouri, and St. Louis’s The Luminary Center for the Arts both represented thelower Midwest.

11/10/2014 The Best of Chicago’s MDW Art Fair: Cat Taxidermy, Homemade Tarot Cards, and Fiberglass Icebergs

http://hyperallergic.com/60210/the-best-of-chicagos-mdw-art-fair-cat-taxidermy-tarot-and-interactive-icebergs/ 2/9

Most booths at MDW didn’t share price points. Sales weren’t boasted about or even discussed,period. MDW fair organizers don’t check their profit margins after the fact, and a lot of thesocially oriented projects don’t lend themselves to sales anyway. Rather than an artist-runspace, think of MDW as an artist-run fair.

“MDW does mimic an art fair in its structure, but it’s much more of a community project andlarge-scale exhibition,” says Abigail Satinsky, Program Director of threewalls, a non-profit artspace and gallery that supports artists through residencies, exhibitions, and grants.

MDW was officially launched at the 11th edition of Version Fest, a month-long, large-scale artfestival that takes place in Chicago’s up-and-coming southside arts neighborhood ofBridgeport. MDW has previously enjoyed two runs: a Spring and Fall edition in 2011. For itsthird iteration, MDW co-founder and co-director Ed “Edmar” Marszweski and crew decided toscale it back to just one fair, keeping in mind the breadth of Chicago’s already jam-packedschedule of alternative art space programming.

Rebecca Schoeneker’s Tarot cards (Images courtesy the artist)

“A lot of the spaces in Chicago have visibility, but there are multiple art scenes here inChicago,” says Marszweski. “In the indie gallery scene, there are spaces that come and goevery couple of years. We are interested in creating a platform dedicated to the breadth of workgoing on there.”

Visitors to the MDW experience a mishmash of exhibitors, from curatorial projects likeGURLDONTBEDUMB to a series of collaborations by artists from artist discussion/not-your-mother’s dinner party The Salon Series to a more standard art-fair booth like Heaven Gallery,

11/10/2014 The Best of Chicago’s MDW Art Fair: Cat Taxidermy, Homemade Tarot Cards, and Fiberglass Icebergs

http://hyperallergic.com/60210/the-best-of-chicagos-mdw-art-fair-cat-taxidermy-tarot-and-interactive-icebergs/ 3/9

where red dots did make an appearance. The first floor of the fair was dedicated to publicationsand publishers of artist magazines, projects, and other programs, while the second floor housedthe booths of more orthodox gallery spaces.

Mana Contemporary, the company that hosted MDW (seen at top), is a giant industrialwarehouse space, an environment that brings an extra feel of rawness to the entire exhibition.On the first floor, cement floors kept the air cold even though temperatures outside feltunseasonably warm. On the second floor, rough, unpolished white walls exposed woodenbeams — some spaces even had giant holes carved into the top of their booths. More than 75exhibitors, including publishers, artist projects, artist-run spaces, performers, and galleries,showed up.

As at any giant art event, for MDW one must digest a lot of visual stimulation in a short period oftime, and then attempt to remember what the hell just happened, who they saw, and what itmight mean. Rather than try to give a visual tour of this fair, I’ve awarded prizes for the top fivesuperlatives that I felt most appropriate for the standout work I found.

* * *

Jenny Buffington’s “Waterfall”(All images by author unlessnoted)

Most Graceful Nature-Inspired Art:

Jenny Buffington’s “Waterfall” and Rebecca Mir & Casey Droege’s Iceberg and Sorcery

11/10/2014 The Best of Chicago’s MDW Art Fair: Cat Taxidermy, Homemade Tarot Cards, and Fiberglass Icebergs

http://hyperallergic.com/60210/the-best-of-chicagos-mdw-art-fair-cat-taxidermy-tarot-and-interactive-icebergs/ 4/9

Jenny Buffington‘s sculpture “Waterfall” (2012) looks like strands of silly putty hardened anddyed shades of blue and white. It flows out from a wall and coalesces onto the cement floor ofCo-Prosperity Sphere’s booth, questioning man’s relationship to nature in the process. Doesman create nature, or does nature create man? On the first floor, investigations into the naturalworld continue at the Iceberg and Sorcery publications booth, an online storefront committedto art and magic created by artists Rebecca Mir and Casey Droege. Here I found Mir’s three-part series SHE IS RESTLESS, a series of small, 2″ x 3″, artist books that fold out into differenttypes of natural elements. Mir’s books explore romanticized relationships with our naturalenvironment; they are poetic and quietly graceful, and exhibit a true concern and connectionwith nature.

Most Awkwardly Sexual, Crowd-Pleaser Art:

Sarah and Joseph Belknap’s “How I learned to stop worrying” (2012)

11/10/2014 The Best of Chicago’s MDW Art Fair: Cat Taxidermy, Homemade Tarot Cards, and Fiberglass Icebergs

http://hyperallergic.com/60210/the-best-of-chicagos-mdw-art-fair-cat-taxidermy-tarot-and-interactive-icebergs/ 5/9

Artist Young Sun Han riding “How I learned to stop worrying”

At Octagon Gallery, artist couple and collaborative duo Sarah and Joseph Belknap created a

11/10/2014 The Best of Chicago’s MDW Art Fair: Cat Taxidermy, Homemade Tarot Cards, and Fiberglass Icebergs

http://hyperallergic.com/60210/the-best-of-chicagos-mdw-art-fair-cat-taxidermy-tarot-and-interactive-icebergs/ 6/9

rideable sculpture that touched many visitors’ crotches. Positioned in the middle of the boothspace, a six-foot-tall hunk of fiberglass hardened and molded into an iceberg floats above theground on four giant, black springs — Think a playground toy. “The fiberglass is hollow forweight and structural purposes, so we could allow a 300-pound drunk person to give it hell,”says Sarah Belknap. Their iceberg was part of Octagon’s MDW program MELTDOWN, whichdiscusses environmental issues with aplomb and humor. Visitors got on top of this iceberg andbounced enthusiastically back and forth. “Appalling” and “intriguing” are two words that suitablydescribe the motion this iceberg induced.

April Childers’s “It’s Almost Friday (Hang OnKitty)”

Most Ridiculous Taxidermy Art:

April Childers’s “It’s Almost Friday (Hang On Kitty)”

At the GURLDONTBEDUMB booth, curators and collaborative/best-friend duo Eileen Muellerand Jamie Steele put together a collection of brightly colored, playful, tongue-in-cheek art thatwould coax even the most austere minimalist painter out of their self-induced seriousness. Thetwo artists are interested in poking fun at feminist clichés, in part by curating objects that are hotpink and over-the-top. “We use pink as a way to start discussion,” says Steele, matter-of-factly.The taxidermy show-pleaser here is April Childers’s “It’s Almost Friday (Hang On Kitty)” (2009),a cat wearing a pair of mini-Ugg boots, a very hip pink jacket, and a matching cap. It hangs ontoa vintage chandelier (only one of the lights turns on) by one tiny, stuffed gloved paw. Kitty sticksout its tongue as if to say “Rad hangin’ here, man!”

Most Anticipated Artist Magazine:

Monsters & Dust’s Flowers (Issue 3)

Online arts and culture journal Monsters & Dust, which describes itself as dedicated to the

11/10/2014 The Best of Chicago’s MDW Art Fair: Cat Taxidermy, Homemade Tarot Cards, and Fiberglass Icebergs

http://hyperallergic.com/60210/the-best-of-chicagos-mdw-art-fair-cat-taxidermy-tarot-and-interactive-icebergs/ 7/9

“innovative, fantastic, fabulous, subversive, radical, and thoughtful” among other adjectives,released its first Web-only issue in November 2009. Three years later, and with the help ofGallery 400 and threewalls’s The Propeller Fund, the Monsters & Dust team launched theirvision into the physical world with issue three: Flowers, a collection of writings, art, and ideasbased around the idea of flowers — as kitsch objects and ornamentation, as sexually chargedplants, and as moments of memorial. The issue is dedicated to queer Chicago artist MarkAguhar, who took her own life in March 2012. “It still feels really good to have somethingphysical, and I think it also speaks to our process — we collaborate with people working indifferent media, and not everything can be represented to its fullest on the web,” says co-founder Aay Preston-Myint. Just because Monsters & Dust released a print-version, however,doesn’t mean they’ll lose their web angle. “Because not everything can be represented to itsfullest in print either, for this issue and over the next couple of months we are going to roll outweb-only content as well,” says Preston-Myint.

11/10/2014 The Best of Chicago’s MDW Art Fair: Cat Taxidermy, Homemade Tarot Cards, and Fiberglass Icebergs

http://hyperallergic.com/60210/the-best-of-chicagos-mdw-art-fair-cat-taxidermy-tarot-and-interactive-icebergs/ 8/9

Monsters and Dust

Most Mystical Art that Could Change Your Path in Life:

Rebecca Schoenecker at Eel Space

At MDW’s Eel Space booth, artist/musician Rebecca Schoenecker offered $10 tarot cardreadings using a deck that she designed based on her personal experiences, the collectiveunconscious, and mythologies. She read a Celtic cross spread, which is best used to answerspecific questions through examining the immediate future, the distant past, hopes and fears,

11/10/2014 The Best of Chicago’s MDW Art Fair: Cat Taxidermy, Homemade Tarot Cards, and Fiberglass Icebergs

http://hyperallergic.com/60210/the-best-of-chicagos-mdw-art-fair-cat-taxidermy-tarot-and-interactive-icebergs/ 9/9

factors affecting situation, and final outcome. After the fair she’ll continue to do tarot readingsout of her Pilsen home, anywhere in Chicago, and while on tour with her band Laughing EyeWeeping Eye. “I taught myself tarot by making my own deck,” says Schoenecker. “I’ve beenpracticing for about a year now.” Open your third eye, if you dare.

MDW Fair ran from November 9 through 11 in Chicago.

Related

Top 5 Chicago Shows of2012

Fountain Art Fair NYMoving to 69th RegimentArmory

A First-Hand Report fromArt Chicago

December 28, 2012In "Articles" January 23, 2012

In "News"

May 12, 2010In "Galleries"