Set up a festival providing free gallery space, giving hundreds of artists a chance to see each other’s work and letting the public view it unjuried and uncensored. Throw in some music, dance, plays, and performance art and you’ve got an aesthetic utopia. At least that’s what the organizers of Around the Coyote, the arts festival being held in Wicker Park this weekend, would say if you asked them. But a noticeable grumbling is rising from the ranks. The same artists the festival is supposedly helping to promote are leveling charges of commercialism and exploitation. Is their work just a come-on for liquor sales? Or are these artists just singing the same old tune we hear every time the underground is discovered by the mainstream?
Happy-Delpech used a formula that had worked for him in Paris: eager artists plus his own entrepreneurial skills, which attracted a volunteer work force and donated spaces for artists. His wit and ceaseless energy didn’t hurt either, generating enough publicity to attract worldwide attention.
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The greatest concentration of artists, some 150 of them, will be based in three large buildings, the cornerstones of the artistic community in Wicker Park: the Flat Iron Building, the Paulina Arts Center, and the Ludwig Drum Factory building.
To help visitors find their way through this jungle of creativity, there’s a printed directory as well as paw prints painted on the sidewalk to indicate which buildings are participating. This increased attention to detail may help offset the possibility of stragglers wandering into private apartments and work spaces, as happened last year. With the recession and the closure of many galleries throughout the city, especially in the formerly strong River North gallery district, some artists believe ATC has the perfect way to fill in the gap, to show both neophytes and discovered professionals. But ATC is experiencing some growing pains.
Fitz Gerald, an experimental filmmaker and director of events for ATC, says “The artists will always come first–it’s written in our bylaws. I think those that are complaining feel above it. I don’t feel above it.”
Though participation in ATC is not written into his leases, Andrews admits that it’s not uncommon for him to remind tenants that if they don’t they may have difficulty when it comes time to renew. “I don’t think that’s threatening or intimidating, it’s real life,” he says. “You have to be a serious artist to be in my building, you can’t be a dilettante. I don’t judge, I’m not a curator, but I let artists know what to expect when they come in.
When Bonilla arrived at the auction, he discovered his painting had fetched a paltry $150, bought by his landlord Andrews. The bidding started low in order to get the auction going, he was told.
