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

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.

Today, your Bad at Sportscenterers take refuge in Diane Christiansen's room at the Chicago Cultural Center's exhibition An Instrument in the Shape of a Woman. Her enrapturing paintings and animations play tricks in the cosmic sands as we feel and laugh our way through the existential biggies, buoyed by bodies, icons and acorns. Curator Annie Morse helps lead our sense of the exhibition and takes us through the long, pandemic-wrought fraughtness that permeates the space. Part one of a three part series!

Nura Ali's wide-ranging practise investigates the linguistic scaffolding upholding the assumptions we bring to the act of reading and writing. We speak about her most recent exhibition, blackness, whole-ness, the power of language, and the power of cultural unions.

Nura Ali is a visual artist, writer and curator, living and working in Calgary, Alberta. She received a BFA in Visual Art from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, a BA in English Literature, Art History and Italian from the University of Leicester and a BA in History from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her work has been shown nationally and received numerous awards and grants; most recently from the Calgary Arts Development,  the Rozsa Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts. She is a founding members of the Vancouver Artists Labour Union; a unionised workers cooperative whose mission it is to transform labour practises in the arts sector and create fair, equitable and sustainable working conditions for artists and cultural workers.

https://www.instagram.com/nuranura1986/

http://www.stride.ab.ca/

Today on Bad at Sportscenter: Kelly Lloyd! Yes, that one. Kelly and Jesse sit down in the cupola at the Ox-Bow School of Art — mere hectometers from where they met almost a decade ago — to talk about practice (and practice talking), about the naming of the thing, about art education and parties. Kelly's practice spans genre and form and most actively in this moment revolves around her research and its public instantiation, the (excellent) podcast This Thing We Call Art, for which she interviews artists about their livelihoods and labor. You can probably find it wherever you found this (including on WLPN). 

http://www.k-lloyd.com

https://www.thisthingwecallart.com/

(photo credit: Cat Garcia)

We meet Paul Pfeiffer inside his retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago to talk about ghosts, spectacle, and the metaphysics of sports. Known for erasing athletes from footage and turning stadiums into stages of worship, Pfeiffer opens up about boxing as performance, the haunted loop of fandom, and building media rituals in the Philippines.

Also: parrots, Deion Sanders, lip sync monks, and the death of the moment.

Names dropped:

Deion Sanders - https://www.instagram.com/deionsanders/?hl=en 
Manny Pacquiao - mannypacquiao.ph
The Bible (yes, the text) - https://thesatanictemple.com/pages/hail-satan?srsltid=AfmBOoqTwkeDSDwxOmlvVLQX8QQduw8ehfzt3sYzUMFMvJO-_ym35hOg
Tom Gunning - https://cms.uchicago.edu/people/tom-gunning
Joshua Oppenheimer - https://cream.ac.uk/people/josh-oppenheimer/ 
DJ Spooky (Paul Miller) - djspooky.com
Gina Osterloh - ginaosterloh.com
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago - mcachicago.org
Biennale of Sydney - biennaleofsydney.art
Contemporary Art Gallery Vancouver - cagvancouver.org

Caitlind r.c. Brown & Wayne Garrett

Caitlind r.c. Brown & Wayne Garrett explore the interspace between seemingly polarized entities: light + dark, nature + culture, DIY + institutional, individual + collective. Based in Calgary/Mohkinstsis, the duo centres their practice in relational space, conceptualizing installations and interventions primarily for the public realm. Their projects beckon viewers with novel materials and participatory contexts, inviting strangers to share in collaborative viewership. Beautiful, subversive, playful, and radically inclusive, their works transform the everyday through a critical shift in perspective.

We talk through hibernation, place as space, the magic of light, a physical glitch art (the show image is an image of the work "Carbon Copy", 2022)and the magic that could be in post-social practice "New Genra Public Art." Oh, and Duncan tries to defend the Stampede.

https://incandescentcloud.com/

This is part of a series of conversations curated by Naomi Potter and the Esker Foundation in service of evolving a portrait of the future of Calgary's contemporary art world.

It is an idea about investigating places though conversations with artists. As though, through a series of conversations with sensitive and emblematic makers we could come to a greater understanding of a context, not just artistic practices.

In this episode Duncan reaches out to Naomi Potter and the Esker Foundation to curate a series of conversations, in the hopes of evolving a portrait of the future of Calgary's contemporary art world.

It is an idea about investigating places though conversations with artists. As though, through a series of conversations with sensitive and emblematic makers we could come to a greater understanding of a context, not just artistic practices.

It is kind of an experiment.

The Esker Foundation is Calgary's and one of Canada's premier contemporary art venues, and an incredibly unique Canadian investigation into alternative arts funding and philanthropic artistic support thanks to arts patron, Jim Hill. We did a show about it. 

Here is a link...

https://badatsports.com/2019/episode-695-naomi-potter-and-the-esker-foundation/

This week Nick Cave chats with Brian and Ryan about his career-spanning survey exhibition Forothermore at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Cave shares his process conceiving of his dazzling soundsuits and sculptures, as well as how to find exuberance in resistance and activism within a work of art.

This week Maryam Taghavi casts a spell over Brian and Duncan. Will they recover? We don't know. What we know is this... Taghavi plays and pulls codes at the edge of beauty and language. What about languages beyond languages? In her work she uses and recreates a language of the occult practices derived from Islamic mysticism. Her sigils promise to evoke real and active metaphysical powers. These forms become channels, lovely and beyond form itself – concept to volition, presence to absence. The works are a wish invoked. The conversation a wish fulfilled. Will Brian and Duncan ever be the same?

https://www.maryamtaghavi.com/

https://artadia.org/

The Bad at Sports crew is joined by Azadeh Gholizadeh. Her works explore the body, landscape, and the fragmentation of memory. Her works use weaving and needle work to generate and worry her images and objects. The works call to mind a powerful connection to place and dismantle that connection through a glitchy digital memory and build towards a reassembled experience. Azadeh Gholizadeh is a Chicago-based artist and educator, and a 2022 Artadia awardee.

https://www.azadehgholizadeh.com/

https://artadia.org/

Splitting her time between Spain and Chicago, Selva Aparicio is a research based interdisciplinary artist, whose work includes sculpture, installation and performance. On today's episode of Bad at Sports Center, Jesse and Ryan speak with Selva following the announcement of her 2022 Artadia Award. We discuss the origins of her medical research, the ethical means by which she sources her materials, and the context of community and place in her practice. 

https://www.selvaaparicio.com/

https://artadia.org/awards/

Everything Must Go, so let's. Jeffrey Michael Austin — interdisciplinary artist and musician — joins Ryan Peter Miller and Jesse Something Malmed to talk about their reflective new exhibition at the Chicago Art Department. Hope in the dark, illusion, allusion, elusiveness, late capitalism, climate crisis, the collective, the needing-tending, the tenderness of a phrase like *help wanted* and enduring questions of scale and capacity guide our winding conversation. What else?

https://www.jeffreymichaelaustin.com/

https://chicagoartdepartment.org/

We sit down with curator Rachel Adams to talk about institutional evolution, artists as infrastructure, and how curatorial practice shifts between museums and biennials. Rachel reflects on working with artists like Cauleen Smith, Liz Magic Laser, and Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, the power of slow curation, and why she's drawn to hybrid spaces that defy the market.

Along the way: phantom titles, artist contracts, Minneapolis moments, and a manifesto in a box of ice cream bars.

Cauleen Smith

cauleensmith.com

Liz Magic Laser

lizmagiclaser.com

Beatriz Santiago Muñoz

lima.art

Candice Hopkins

indigenousnewyork.org

Nato Thompson

https://www.natothompson.com/about

Christina Vassallo

columbusmuseum.org

Sarah Schultz

mplsart.com

Alison Hearst

themodern.org

Andrea Andersson

riversinstitute.org

Franklin Sirmans

pamm.org

Mary Jane Jacob

https://never-the-same.org/interviews/mary-jane-jacob/

Independent Curators International (ICI)

curatorsintl.org

Bad at Sports welcomes Ashanté Kindle and  Josie Love Roebuck from LatchKey Gallery and their exhibition "CROWN" at Expo Chicago 2022.

Working from a place of healing, "CROWN"  explores and rejoices in the legacy of Black hair. The exhibition, named after the CROWN Act - a law that prohibits race-based hair discrimination which is the denial of employment and educational opportunities because of hair texture or protective hairstyles including braids, locs, twists or bantu knots - luxuriates in the scope, range, beauty, and legacy that is black hair.

https://www.latchkey-gallery.com/

https://www.latchkey-gallery.com/woks-by-ashant-kindle

https://www.latchkey-gallery.com/artist-josie-love-roebuck

https://www.gioswaby.com/

https://www.claireoliver.com/artists/giovanna-swaby/

This week on Bad at Sports, Kera MacKenzie and Andrew Mausert-Mooney, the filmmakers behind Make A Distinction, join Jesse and the Block Museum's Curator of Media Arts, Mike Metzger. Make A Distinction is an innovative, hybrid non-fiction feature that blends together strains of essayistic, observational and agitprop filmmaking into a blistering montage. Political in a capital P way, it's urgent for most everyone, especially those of us in the so-called Chicago universe. 

It's the first week in April and that means its time for EXPO Chicago. Brian chats with the fair's director Tony Karman about returning from the pandemic after two and a half years and how best to get into the art amid all the hubbub.

This week Bad at Sports Center checks in with Chicago photo super hero Jessica Labatte and a coterie of Northern Illinois University students (Alex Dulski, Edwin Perez-Hernandez, and Emma Vitallo) as they work towards the construction of the world's largest paper snowflake.

Names Dropped:

Barbara Kasten

Ross Sawyers

Jessica Stockholder

Dan Peterman

Gaylen Gerber

Iowa

Guiness Book of World Records

Western Exhibitions

https://www.mickey.online/

https://www.mickey.online/landscape-with-a-man-killed-by-a-snake

https://melcookart.com/home.html

https://www.instagram.com/wizard_neal/

We sit down with a delegation of Irish curators—Michele Horrigan (Askeaton Contemporary Arts), Michael Hill (Temple Bar Gallery + Studios), and Mark O'Gorman (The Complex)—to unpack what it means to build artist-centered institutions on an island without a commercial art market. From weather-worn banana warehouses to smoke-machine-filled nightclubs, these curators share space-making tactics, post-colonial entanglements, and the challenges of caring for artists without selling to collectors.

They're in Chicago for EXPO and bringing the heat—with nothing but friendship, found neon, and deeply site-responsive shows. Also: fluorescent hands, oak horns, grant hustle, and Duchampian office doors

Names Dropped:

Liliane Puthod – https://www.lilianeputhod.net/
Áine Mac Giolla Bhríde (A.Mac) – https://www.motherstankstation.com/artist/aine-mac-giolla-bhride/
Devin Mays – https://regardsgallery.com/artists/devin-mays/
Haynes Riley / Good Weather – https://www.goodweather.llc
Becky Nahom (ICA) – https://curatorsintl.org/about/collaborators/23122-becky-nahom
Stephanie Smith – https://curatorsintl.org/about/collaborators/4391-stephanie-smith
Kate Sierzputowski – https://katesierzputowski.com
Amanda Rice – https://www.instagram.com/p/Cx2lfLmL_Qk
Frank Wasser – https://www.instagram.com/frankwasserartist
Bryony Dunne – https://www.instagram.com/bryonymaydunne
Olga Balema – https://www.clearing-gallery.com/artists/olga-balema
Hannah Hoffman Gallery – https://www.instagram.com/hannahhoffmangallery
Bridget Donahue Gallery – https://www.bridgetdonahue.nyc
John Latham / Flat Time House – http://www.flattimeho.org.uk
Brian O'Doherty – https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/12/arts/brian-odoherty-dead.html
Tom Friedman – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Friedman
Duchamp (Marcel) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Duchamp
The Smiths (band) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smiths

Website/IG Handles (if available or mentioned):

·       Askeaton Contemporary Arts / @askeatonarts

·       Temple Bar Gallery + Studios / @templebargallery

·       The Complex Dublin / @thecomplexdublin

·       Good Weather / @goodweathergallery

This week Brian and Ryan Roundtable with Asha Iman Veal,  Tulika Ladsariya, and Mike Nourse of the Center program at Hyde Park Art Center. Antics ensue in discussions of life as a mid-career artists in Chicago and the exhibition Dream. 

On this week's Bad at SportsCenter we chatter about with Lan Tuazon. A Chicago-based sculptor, Tuazon discusses the culmination of her 10 year trilogy, Shift in the Order of Things, recently concluding at the Hyde Park Art Center. From Michael Reynolds' Earthship to Alfred Heineken's brick bottles, we unpeel a metaphorical onion to reveal the genius at the center of this epic series of "documentation sculpture". Also, Jesse dubs the nickname "Chi Chi" for this human settlement we call Chicago. Call in and  let us know your thoughts.

This week's Bad at SportsCenter guest is Chicago expat Aaron Delehanty, a painter/sculptor and "dioramacist" based in Rochester, NY. Taking from his experience at Chicago's Field Museum and the Rochester Museum & Science Center, Delehanty's Loud Cow Studio fabricates dioramas, replicas, models and murals. In addition to his most recent drawings and sculptures, we discuss the narrative of the natural world, name dropping Freidrich Heinrich Alexander Von Humboldt and Carl Akeley, and discuss some of Delehanty's upcoming projects with Maria's Packaged Goods and the state of Vermont.

Return to Miami continues with our second day at the NADA fair.

We rock the mic with Claudine Ise, Pedro Pedro, and Cash 4.

Names dropped:

Goldfinch
Mari Eastman
Em Kettner
907 Crew
UFO
SMELLS
Stickymonger
Sickid
Trice
Lorenzo Lozini
The Deuce
Ryan Schneider
Rebecca Morgan
Ridley Howard
Holly Coulis
Sam Keller
Scott Ogden (SHRINE Gallery)
Rob Ober
David Antonio Cruz
Monique Meloche
and

THE BEMIS CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ART!

Today we drop down in Miami and chat NFTs with John Lee, Tom Sanford, and technologist Amol.

We also reveal that we are rolling with the mysterious graffiti artist Snoeman.

On this week's Jess(i)e-fest, Jessie Mott joins Jesse and non-Jess(i)e Ryan in the studio to talk about her upcoming exhibition at the Epiphany Center for the Arts, Like Queer Animals:We Hold Your Gaze, a collaboration with queer scholar Chanal Nadeau. We yak about the origins of Mott's aberrant animals, in all of their forms, including paintings, publications and animations. Take a listen on the wild side.

On this pod's weekcast Iris Bernblum joins Brian and Ryan for an unadorned conversation about her current studio practice. Bernblum's work explores an animalic kinship, navigating a longing for the unknowable natural world. The pair conjures a sensual environment by imbuing the space with scent, sound, and lush color. Her cross disciplinary practice includes watercolors, video and sculpture speaking to ideas around human desire to control and tame wild spaces.

Name Drops:

Also, we dropped the first NFT Bad at Sports has ever made, the first podcast on Foundation, and the first interview with both Kayvon Tehranian and Lindsay Howard. Maybe the only NFT we will ever make and it is hella meta (like not the facebook nonsense).

Drops at 11am CST on Friday November 19th, 2021. Good luck friends.

Foundation.app
Kayvon
Lindsay

Live from Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago

In this intimate, laughter-filled episode recorded live at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Duncan and Ryan sit down with artists Jaqueline Cedar and Josh Dihle on the occasion of their concurrent solo exhibitions. The conversation traverses everything from Duchampian bathroom jokes to model train nostalgia, parenthood, masculinity, and why drawing still matters.

We dig deep into Cedar's intimate, narrative-rich figure paintings and Dihle's large, toy-like sculptural paintings, both brimming with color, play, and strange tenderness. Along the way, we explore the value of humor, discomfort, labor, scale, and why both artists moonlight as gallerists—Cedar with the roving Good Naked Gallery and Dihle with events at Color Club and The Sugar Hole ice cream shop. It's a heartfelt meditation on art, joy, burnout, and why we keep making.

Name Drop List & Related Links

• Jaqueline Cedar
  Website | Instagram
  Good Naked Gallery – Instagram
• Josh Dihle
  Website | Instagram
  Color Club – Website | The Sugar Hole
• Andrew Rafacz Gallery
  Website | Instagram
• Artists & References:
  Roger Brown
  Suellen Rocca
  David Hockney
  Henry Moore
  Pieter Bruegel the Elder
  Duchamp's "Étant donnés"
  Julius Caesar Gallery (Chicago)