Bad at Sports – Details, episodes & analysis

Recorded live at the CAB6 × MCA Tailgate

This episode was recorded as part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB6) activation on the plaza of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, where Bad at Sports staged a series of open-air interviews, community dialogues, and tailgate-style broadcasts. Artists, architects, students, and the public intersected in a shared social space designed for porous conversation. Episode 920 features Tony Lewis, whose practice has shaped Chicago's contemporary drawing discourse for more than a decade.

In this conversation, Tony Lewis joins Bad at Sports for an unscripted outdoor interview on the MCA plaza during the Architecture Biennial. The discussion moves fluidly between Lewis's formative years in Chicago, the evolution of his drawing practice, his relationship to language systems (notably shorthand), and the material intelligence behind works that incorporate rubber bands, graphite, or constraint mechanisms.

Lewis reflects on mentorship, studio discipline, the importance of failure and patience, and the way drawing becomes a long-term conversation with materials. He speaks candidly about the Chicago art ecosystem, the emotional dimensions of his practice, and the shifting sense of scale and intimacy in his recent work — including his Louis Bag series and large graphite constructions.

The episode captures an artist thinking in real time about endurance, attention, vulnerability, and artistic friendship.

·       Drawing as a full-body practice: constraint, tension, rubber bands, architecture of line.

·       Language + shorthand: transcription, coded systems, linguistic compression.

·       Chicago as a site of artistic maturation: community, humility, seriousness.

·       Material intelligence: graphite as dust, weight, pressure, residue.

·       Patience and endurance: long timelines for developing works.

·       Professional evolution: moving from iconic early works to quieter, more intimate forms.

·       Artistic friendship and trust: collaboration, studio visits, long-running dialogues.

·       Shorthand Drawings / Gregg Shorthand–based works

·       Rubber band constructions & torn-grid drawings

·       Graphite floor drawings / powder dispersion works

·       Louis Bag series 

·       Wall-based large graphite sheets under tension

NAMES DROP-ed 

·       Tony Lewis - https://massimodecarlo.com/artists/tony-lewis

·       Kevin Beasley (referenced indirectly in relation to material practice) - https://caseykaplangallery.com/artists/beasley/

·       Nate Young - https://www.moniquemeloche.com/artists/36-nate-young/works/

·       Theaster Gates - https://www.theastergates.com/

·       Michelle Grabner - https://www.michellegrabner.com/

·       Kerry James Marshall - https://jackshainman.com/artists/kerry_james_marshall

·       William Pope.L - https://www.miandn.com/artists/pope-l

·       Rodney McMillian - https://vielmetter.com/artists/rodney-mcmillian/

·       Amanda Williams - https://awstudioart.com/home.html

·       Rashid Johnson - https://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/2830-rashid-johnson/

·       Charles Gaines - https://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/21845-charles-gaines/

·       Torkwase Dyson - https://www.torkwasedyson.com/

·       Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA) - https://mcachicago.org/

·       Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB) - https://chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/

·       Shane Campbell Gallery - https://www.shanecampbellgallery.com/

·       School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) - https://www.saic.edu/

 

Image Sarah Hudson

This week, Bad at Sports hits the road and heads north to Sheboygan and Kohler, Wisconsin — where art, industry, and community collide. We drop into the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) and the Kohler Arts/Industry Residency program to see how a small Midwestern town sustains one of the most ambitious intersections of art and manufacturing in the country. Michelle Grabner and Jodi Throckmorton.

From toilets to terracotta, brass casting to bathroom design, Kohler has been quietly incubating radical artistic practice for decades, embedding artists in its factories while JMKAC builds a civic platform for art environments, vernacular traditions, and contemporary experimentation. We talk with artists, administrators, and community members about what makes this ecosystem work — and why Sheboygan might just be the weirdest, most wonderful art town in America.

John Michael Kohler Arts Center
@jmkac
Kohler Arts/Industry Residency
Kohler Co.
@kohler

 

Name-Drop

• Jodi Throckmorton  - https://curatorsintl.org/about/collaborators/7932-jodi-throckmorton

• Michelle Grabner - https://www.michellegrabner.com/

• John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) — https://www.jmkac.org/

• Kohler Arts/Industry Residency — https://www.jmkac.org/arts-industry/

• Kohler Co. — https://www.kohlercompany.com/

• Art Preserve (JMKAC's satellite museum) — https://www.jmkac.org/art-preserve/

• Arts/Industry Alumni (sampled in conversation):

• Beth Lipman — https://www.bethlipman.com/ | @beth_lipman

• Ann Agee — https://www.annageestudio.com/

• Jeffrey Clancy — https://jeffreyclancy.com/home.html

• Ashwini Bhat — https://www.jmkac.org/exhibition/ashwini-bhat-reverberating-self/

• Pao Houa — https://www.jmkac.org/exhibition/pao-houa-her-the-imaginative-landscape/

• Lily Cox-Richard  — https://www.jmkac.org/exhibition/water-sprouts-and-remains-an-unfolding/

• Sheboygan community — https://www.townofsheboyganwi.gov/

 

In this lively and insightful episode, Bad at Sports hosts a roundtable conversation with Dirk Denison (Founding Board Member of the Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB)), David Salkin (Designer, Curator, and Board Husband), and Jennifer Armetta (Executive Director of the CAB). Together, they reflect on the impact and legacy of the Chicago Architecture Biennial and its shifting forms of experimentation, urbanism, and civic engagement. The episode explores the curatorial frameworks of CAB, the roles of education and public space, and how architecture becomes a lens through which cities reimagine themselves.

Names Dropped:

- Dirk Denison - https://www.dirkdenisonarchitects.com/
- David Salkin - https://www.davidsalkin.com/
- Jennifer Armetta - https://www.engage-projects.com/
- Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB) - https://chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/
- Venice Architecture Biennial - https://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/2025
- CAB 5: This is a Rehearsal - https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/exhibitions/dress-rehearsal-chicago-architecture-biennial-2023
- CAB 6: Shift - https://chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/
- Chicago Architecture Center - https://www.architecture.org/
- Graham Foundation - http://www.grahamfoundation.org/
- Studio Gang - https://studiogang.com/
- MASS Design Group - https://massdesigngroup.org/
- Jeanne Gang - https://studiogang.com/people/jeanne-gang/
- Open House Chicago - https://www.architecture.org/open-house-chicago/about
– Burnham - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Burnham
– Frank Llyod Wright - https://flwright.org/
– the ID at IIT - https://id.iit.edu/
– Mies - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Mies_van_der_Rohe
– Louis Sullivian  - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Sullivan
- Professor Landis - https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/professor/1239455
- Rahm Emmanuel - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahm_Emanuel

Today on Bad at Sportscenter: Devin Balara and Bobby Gonzales! Another little transportive interview from summer sessions at the Ox-Bow School of Art in Saugatuck, be ears now and listen in to what a porch-hang with two generous geniuses and (whatever we'd call a) Jesse. Enjoy a careening, ebullient conversation in never mids west. 

http://cargocollective.com/devinbalara

https://bobby-gonzales.com/

Tamara Lee-Anne Cardinal is a mixed-media artist, community activist, and perpetual learner. Born in Lloydminster, Saskatchewan, she has been a visitor to Otôskwanihk/Mohkinstsis (Calgary) for the past nine years. Cardinal traces her ancestral roots back to both Nêhiyaw and Deutsch decent. Graduating from AUArts in 2015, Cardinal has since been a recipient of the National BMO 1st Art! Competition Award as well as the Alberta Foundation for the Arts Young Artist Award in 2017. Cardinal has been an active member in the urban Indigenous community within Treaty 7 Territory, activating roles through Awo Taan Healing Lodge Society, Native Counselling Services of Alberta, the Midewiwin Teaching Lodge Society of Alberta, and currently through Miskanawah's Diamond Willow Youth Lodge. Cardinal's work continues to be a reflection of the teachings she receives along her journey; it is an invitation for others to become a part of the process, to partake in its making.

Our conversation takes place in the wake of the revelations about the abuse suffered by indigenous humans at the hands of religiously motivated colonialists in Canadian communities schools and we discuss how art can be a site of healing and how we must all be attentive and responsible for that healing.

http://tamaraleeannecardinal.com/

The Earth is changing. Quickly. Should we be afraid? Or can we embrace the changes and challenges and boldly look ahead? Can we build a new, better life on this planet? Ryan and Brian sit down with curator Nick Butcher and artists Allen Moore and Kat Jarvinen of The New Earth to find out.

https://publicworksgallery.com/blogs/exhibitions/the-new-earth
https://publicworksgallery.com/
https://katjarvinen.com/
https://chicagoartistscoalition.org/artists/allen-moore
https://www.sonnenzimmer.com/

 

Artists duo Sans façon (Charles Blanc and Tristan Surtees) began working together in 2001 in Glasgow, Scotland. Their diverse practice responds to the relationship between people and place. Collaborating with architects, composers, geographers, or perfumers, they work internationally on projects ranging from ephemeral performances, temporary installations in public space, large scale permanent artworks, to developing and implementing city wide strategies. Their approach renews awareness and tempts interaction, inviting one to look and think differently about our relationship to our surroundings and one another.

In this conversation we trace the core of Sans façon's work and use their almost decade long residency with the City of Calgary to open up the dimensions of what is truly a unique and singularly impactful practice.

www.sansfacon.org

Selina Trepp—visual musician, collage animist, radical recycler—talks time, process, performance, material and more on the occasion of An Instrument in the Shape of a Woman at the Chicago Cultural Center. Our dynamic and inspired conversation zooms through the multiplicities of ways Selina's playful practice breaks open the forms and formats she's drawn to (and drawing on). Once again we're joined by curator Annie Morse and the ambient sounds of meaning being made and publics being formed.    https://selinatrepp.info/home.html
https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/instrument.html
 

asmaa al-issa (b. Baghdad, Iraq) immigrated to Mohkínstsis/Calgary, Alberta, Canada with her family in 2001. Her interdisciplinary practice engages her lived experiences with the land, materials, and people around her. She is continually building knowledge of recipes, traditions, philosophies, theories, and histories of the Middle East while developing her practice as an artist and educator. asmaa holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Arts from the University of Calgary (2013) and a Master of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies from Simon Fraser University (2017).

Our wide ranging conversation seeks the roots of her practice and voice, post-colonialist futures, the nature of interdisciplinarity, and what we think when we speak of home.

Socially engaged watercolor sampler and plein air painter extraordinaire Leslie Baum and curator Annie Morse join us for part two of our series interviewing the three artists featured in An Instrument in the Shape of a Woman at the Chicago Cultural Center. Baum's sumptuous, joyous paintings are attended in this exhibition by a "pedagogical shelf", a vitrine that runs perpendicular (both physically and conceptually) to her work, revealing the nestled, intimate process by which they are made.    https://www.lesliebaum.net/
https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/instrument.html