Winter Show 2012

Renee McGinnis' work, in Lula's dining room, presents the ominous and its positive aftermath, the overgrown. Impending disasters, lusciously painted, confound the viewer. What was made in that factory? what led to this huge billowing cloud of smoke? Why do these power plants look like they are about to burst into flame?

The works serve as beautiful warnings to us all, speaking visually about humanity, triumph, and tragedy. The Palace Floor series takes this ominous tone and turns it on its head. She shifts to the future long after a cataclysm has occurred. Organic topiaries now surround obsolete man made monoliths. A lush hyper-green landscape, with cracks like mud cracks in a drought, is painted like a seductive mosaic floor. This is the antidote for the disasters, covering these segments of earth in all manner of lush vegetation, growth and hope. Once useful and glorified temples of progress, they now seem to haunt us with their mysteriously manicured grounds.

McGinnis grew up on a farm in central Illinois and earned a BFA from Illinois Wesleyan University in 1984. She did graduate work in sociology and anthropology at the University of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited internationally. 

On display in the bar is the The Harry Young collection, which includes hundreds of handmade figures on cardboard that were found in a large wooden box with "Harry Young, 38 Inkerman, St. Thomas, ON" scratched on the inside. The box includes over 350 cardboard figures of cowboys, lawmen and horses. The vast majority are hand drawn. There are a handful of figures that have faces collaged from newspaper ads for cowboy movies. The box also contains a number of other miscellaneous items, including a wearable Marshall's badge and a small, handwritten book of "laws," which establishes rules for cowboy life, morality and justice.
The Winter show will be up until April 20 with a reception to be held with the artist on April 17, 6-9. Both shows are presented in conjunction with Aron Packer of Packer Schopf Gallery.

 Ceremonial Portrait - Girl

Ceremonial Portrait - Boy

Todd Baxter

Owl Scouts: Lost in the Woods series

October 1, 2011 - January 17, 2012

Closing Receptions, January 10, 2012 from 6-9pm

Lula is pleased to be showing a selection of Todd Baxter’s latest series titled “The Owl Scouts: Lost in the Woods.” The series portrays a fictional narrative about two co-ed scouts who get lost deep in the woods on a scouting trip. On their journey they encounter a series of challenges (a flashlight fallen into an owl burrow, a dangerous river crossing, a tornado, and an encounter with a bear) that test their survival skills.
                                           
This stunning collection of large format photos was created over the course of three years. Prior to photography, Baxter worked in painting and collage, both of which have influenced his approach to making photographic art. Baxter’s photographs involve digital collage of elements from different photos into a single frame, creating spectacular, unified images that are at once fantastical, and convincingly real.  Baxter was inspired by Victorian portraiture, classic children’s novels, Native American imagery, and taxidermy.

To construct the elaborate world of the Owl Scouts, Baxter used the help of a team of Chicago artists including, Ander Nilsen, Debbie Carlos, and Marjorie Bailey.  With their help, Baxter refined the narrative, and was able to realize his vision to create a detailed design for the scouts’ uniforms, right down to hand-embroidered Owl Scout patches.  

Challenge 2: River Crossing - Drowning

                                                 
Although we are not able to present the entire series of the photographs for this show, the photos on display reveal critical moments of the series and will leave you begging for more.

These photos are sold in a variety of sizes. For pricing or more information please contact curators Anders Nilsen, ndrs@hotmail_dot_com or Marianne Fairbanks, mfairb@gmail_dot_com

For the closing reception Lula will provide hors d'oeuvres and a cash bar featuring drink specials.

Amy Honchell: Soft Infrastructure

Reception: Tuesday, August 23, 2011  6-9pm

Exhibition: July 13-October 3, 2011

Here at Lula we are excited to get the chance to have a solo show featuring the new work Amy Honchell titled Soft Infrastructure.  This work reveals a soft landscape—created from layers of cloth that are stitched into strata—supporting traces of failed (hard) architecture—dilapidated mining structures, hunting blinds, and communication towers. The improbable, rickety structures stand in opposition to the soft landscape that provides support to them.

Blind, Muscle Memory (detail), 2011

Topology, sewing, and elements of mapping underscore the parallels between the structures and functions of the human body, architecture, and the landscape. Honchell invites viewers to cross unseen boundaries and discover new territories while exploring the sense of touch in a visual way. 

The work in Soft Infrastructure explores memory, navigation, and landscape. Honchell was raised in a section of northeastern Pennsylvania known at the Endless Mountains. The small coal mining towns along the mountains in this area are not particularly notable but traveling through them shaped her. The bends and turns of the roads and rivers are etched into her memory as physical sensations, stories, and imagined adventures. 

Signaling Point (Red Tower), 2010-11

Her work embodies the idea that drawing is an extension of touch, the hand. Whatever the medium for drawing—pen, thread, wire—Honchell thinks about the haptic gestures made and recorded on, in, and through a surface. For the past year she has been engaged in studio investigations of drawing in this vein that that attempt to invert notions of soft and hard, fixed and malleable, structure and collapse.

Rickety Structure X, 2010

New Spring Painting Show- Leslie Baum and Surabhi Ghosh

Opening-- Tuesday, March 29, 2011 6-9pm
Please join us for the opening of the Spring Show at Lula Café which features paintings by two artists, Leslie Baum and Surabhi Ghosh.

If you can't make the opening come by any day to see this exhibition which runs through May.

In the dining room of Lula you will find Axis Mundi, a nonhierarchical presentation of paintings by Leslie Baum. This body of work addresses the idea of the image and the fracturing of image. The paintings depict a collaged space where no one formal element is privileged over another and include large oil paintings and watercolors on arches paper. Baum bases her compositions on the innocuous groupings of pottery shards and stones encountered at archeological sites in New Mexico. Her paintings place the image fragments in a neutral context and in front of an audience never imagined by those who created of the patterned pottery. While acknowledging the mystery of the original messages, Baum’s paintings present an opportunity to make new meanings and associations.

Axis Mundi, 2010

Oil on canvas, 72" x 96"

My Way or the Highway, 2010

Watercolor on arches paper, 30" x 22"

In the bar we have displayed the recent work of Surabhi Ghosh which centers on how pattern and decoration can act as meaningful though often unrecognized signifiers within spiritual, political, and domestic narratives. Through recurrent or systematic use, motifs become codes and patterns become language; only members of a community can fully understand their meaning. But in some instances a symbol (e.g., the circle) holds similar meanings across disparate locations and histories. Her work taps into these shared authorless codes and embodies the mysteries of connectivity found in decorative patterning. Focusing on circles, dots, and borders, she transforms the peripheral into the subject by filling the picture plane with meticulously detailed patterns, reclaiming decoration as valuable rather than disposable. The work of Surabhi Ghosh represents both the tangible and the unknowable while prompting viewers to concentrate on what is often overlooked or undervalued.

Orb 1, 2010

Acrylic and acrylic gouache on panel , 12" x 12"

Earthwork, skywork, 2010

Acrylic on found panel, 14"x11"

For more information and prices contact curators; Anders Nilsen, ndrs@hotmaildotcom or Marianne Fairbanks, mfairb@gmaildotcom

Lula Café - 2541 North Kedzie Blvd - Chicago, IL 60618

Wandering Cloud -- The Photography of Debbie Carlos

For our fall show we are hosting an exhibition titled Wandering Cloud, featuring the photography of Debbie Carlos. With her uncanny eye for light and detail, Carlos is able to capture the ephemeral beauty in moments of quiet. This exhibit features a poetic series of photos that focus on a hand--covered in fur, holding an egg, or subtly stained with beet juice. Also on display will be a range of Carlos’s work that transports the viewer to a variety of places including an orange field of flowers, a rock carved river gorge, and a train station in Kyoto. It is our pleasure to host the first solo exhibition of Carlos’s work, featuring over 20 of her photographs.

Please join us on October 26 from 6-9 p.m. at Lula Café for a reception celebrating the opening of Wandering Cloud. This exhibition runs October through December.

Hand Fluff, 2009
Taroko Gorge, 2009

Tokyo Flowers, 2009

Sprout 1, 2007