galleries - Chicago part 2 - & more trees

We visited a lot of galleries in Chicago of course. Two that really stood out - and that I try to get to regularly are Packer Schopf in the West Loop and Melanie Cooper in River North. Aron Packer was in the midst of installing his next show - image above - works of Karen Savage - but was kind enough to invite us in and spend a lot of time chatting about the work. The images are photograms - direct exposures where the object - beautiful infant dresses - are placed on photosensitive paper and then developed. They felt like the ghosts of the Valerie Mann show I wrote about a few months ago - graphical and compelling.

We went to Melanie Cooper the next day and had an equally long and interesting talk with her about encaustic and various artists.

I was shocked by the disappearance of a number of galleries that seem to be casualties of the economy. Flatfile apparently closed in March. A number of others seem to have disappeared as well. Unsurprising but sad.

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I went back to Matthai Botanical Gardens yet again. The digital image below is the beginning of the next encaustic piece. It will be 12" x 40".