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\r\n","body":"By GINNY VAN ALYEA
During one of Chicago’s very snowy days this winter, I made my way down a quiet North Side block blanketed in white and pulled up to an industrial looking building that, from the outside, I wasn’t quite sure was the right address. I knew only that I was supposed to visit collectors at their Ravenswood residence. I peeked into a side window and saw someone at a desk jump up to meet me at the door, and a moment later Brian Westphal and Michael McVickar invited me out of the snow and into their art-filled home.
After shedding my down-filled layers and meeting the couple’s cats, we first enjoyed some gourmet coffee prepared in a hidden, designer prep space just off of the kitchen. The story of how Brian and Mike’s home came to be was on my mind as soon as I walked in. While the walls are filled with dozens of contemporary paintings and other works of art, the character of the open, ground floor space is also largely defined by its industrial bones, since the building once housed a motor oil company.
The couple gutted and rehabbed their previous home, a worker’s cottage in Roscoe Village. According to Mike, “It was a beautiful little house, but it was on a smaller than normal city lot. We basically still had this list of things that would be nice to have.”
One day, when Mike was looking through The Chicago Reader real estate section, he noticed an ad for a small factory building for sale in Ravenswood. The listing, he recalls, had bells and whistles that both he and Brian wished their existing house had.
“So,” Mike remembers, “I said let’s just go check it out. We called our realtor and came over for a look. Basically it was just a brick box.” The building was two stories, with the first floor totally open and without a kitchen. It had also been neglected. Open windows had let in water, which led to moldy floors. The walls that did exist didn’t go to the ceiling. Because the previous owners had left Chicago and not kept a close eye on things, the space had also been broken into. Graffiti tags were spray painted on the concrete pillars on the first floor.
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Mike adds, “It was kind of a hard living space. We walked out, and I said, ‘No way in hell are we buying this place and leaving our really nice, finished little house.”
Brian remembers it differently, “He didn’t say that.”
“Yes I did,” counters Mike. “Brian was the one who said it was perfect and that we could do so much with it.”
Eventually, of course, they did buy the building. Brian saw promise in the larger lot size and the yard. Even though there was nothing there yet, he says, “It was just grass, but it was clearly a cool space.”
Mike admits, “Had we not previously been through a whole house construction project, I would have run out the door. But we did understand that we could probably get it to look like we wanted.”
Though the project did seem daunting, a previous owner had originally purchased the property intending to live there. They cleaned up the environmental issues, such as a tow truck in the yard and old storage tanks, which were still present once the factory had closed. By the time Brian and Mike came along, the building had a new roof, as well as a new heating system and windows. They were able to move in and live in the space for a while as they began the work of putting in the first floor kitchen, as well as bathrooms and rooms upstairs. They maintained the original open floor plan and kept concrete ceilings, but they covered up some of the exposed brick in order to hang art and simplify the look of the space.
Brian and Mike began buying art together long before embarking on their home renovation. As Mike recalls, “It was a natural evolution. First we had posters, and then Brian started buying some finer framed things.”
Brian tells Mike, “You actually said, ‘I don’t want to hang a bunch of posters on the wall.’ And since we had had a good friend of ours stay with us, and he had been collecting art –”
“Yes,” finishes Mike, “He was the first person we knew who had art. That opened the door for us to see that real people do actually buy these things.”
Those regular encounters through their friend got Mike and Brian to think that they could also learn about and buy art that they loved. For Brian, he admits that they began to understand they valued their friend’s art because it made them ask questions. They were constantly curious about what it was and what made it stand out to them.
The next step to discovering art on their own meant visiting galleries. Though they acknowledge that galleries seemed intimidating at first, mostly due to their own inexperience, as well as what they recall as sticker shock, they slowly got to know a few established dealers, such as River North veteran Ann Nathan, and little by little they overcame what Mike considers initial hurdles. Victor Armendariz, who worked with Nathan for many years, told the couple when they were starting to buy that once they got into it, they wouldn’t be able to stop, something that they now know to be absolutely true.
“There was a piece by Jeffrey Kamberos,” says Brian, “that we had seen at least a year before we bought it, and it just so happened that it never sold. We kept talking about the piece, and after a year, we thought, ‘We obviously want this painting,’ so we finally bought it and, as Victor warned, it’s been downhill ever since.”
Standing in Mike and Brian’s living room, I sensed many pairs of eyes on me. Looking around I noticed many different faces and bodies in the art on view. Much of the work that the couple collects is figurative, which explains their early interactions with dealers like Nathan and Armendariz, as well as William Lieberman, who each represent many figurative artists.
As Mike explains, “We were definitely drawn to figurative work.” Brian adds that they didn’t set out with an exclusive collecting focus, but rather it revealed itself as a dominant draw over time. Eventually the pair decided that narrowing their collecting focus would help further develop their taste.
Eventually both Brian and Mike had to acknowledge that they had gone beyond casual art buying. “It took me a while to say I am a collector,” admits Brian. For Mike, the label came almost out of a necessity to define their role in the art world, “Well, people will ask, ‘Are you an artist or a collector?’ So, you kind of end up owning the term collector, because we are not artists,” he says.
Like other collectors in Chicago I have had the pleasure of interviewing, Brian shares a familiar sentiment about a life with art, “We buy what we love and we love to live with it, so that’s why we do it.” For Mike as well, he says they are not really trying to amass a collection of anything. He emphasizes, “I mean, it really just happens.”
Brian and Mike continue to spend plenty of time visiting galleries and art fairs, but they also acknowledge the ease, as well as the pitfalls, of having so much art available online. For Brian, “These days its much easier with everything being online, since you can easily see and find lots of work. On the other hand you don’t have to go out as much. It’s become like anything else – it’s sort of an Amazon.com world.”
They do still go to galleries, though they confess not as much as they used to. It’s a little awkward to admit, but Brian says, “We used to go a lot more.”
Despite the lure of the comforts of home, the social aspect of the art community cannot be obliterated by the Amazonification of everything. Mike explains, “We like seeing the gallerists and artists, we like running into other collectors. It’s the people who really draw us out.”
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Now the couple says they average at least one purchase a year, their most recent being a porcelain, multimedia piece by Rodrigo Lara Zendejas. Mike interjects, “We had a party here, and we had just gotten this piece that day. William [Lieberman] and Brian [Gillham] from the gallery [Zolla/Lieberman] had told us they were going to come up sometime to help us hang it, but they came to the party and put it up right then. It was a fun example of how so many things come together in the art world.”
When explaining what it is about figurative work that appeals to each of them, Mike says, “It comes down to the fact that I just don’t get abstract art. I can understand some of it, but I just find it kind of esoteric that you have to go in and you have to learn. It’s not a bad thing to have to learn the artist’s perspective of course, but I want to look at something and be able to form a narrative on my own.”
Brian gets to the point: “We don’t ultimately care whether there is a meaning behind these pieces. People come over and ask me, ‘What’s this about?’ Well, we don’t know. I usually say it’s whatever you want it to be. But for us there’s resonance to seeing people, rather than the abstract.”
To Mike, art is primarily visual, and it should be personally appealing, “It can be beautiful to you or not. Maybe sometimes it gets more beautiful the more you look.” He sees the attraction like a relationship, one that in order to last must go deeper than a first impression. For Mike and Brian, art must also defy its surroundings. As Mike puts it, “I just can’t stand hearing people say something like, “Where am I going to put that? Will it fit over the sofa? That’s not why you buy a piece of art.”
Talking more about why exactly you do buy a piece of art, Brian and Mike went back and forth about how their own collecting journey might look to a younger generation that has been adamant about seeking experiences over things. Reflects Brian, “To me these paintings are not things, they are not objects you are going to use for a while and either dispose of, or just upgrade, later. These are things you want to live with, so in a way they are experiential because every time you walk into the room you know you are affected by what they do to you in this space.”
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Mike is enthusiastic about the uniqueness art brings to his day-to-day routine. “I love that I’m the only one in the world that has that painting by that artist,” he says, pointing to a striking scene of a cluster of older, nude women embracing each other and laughing, like they’re sharing secrets while posing for a candid photo in school days. He explains, “That’s an interesting piece – it’s a very inviting and realistic portrayal of these aging women together. One of them is the artist’s mother, and the others are her family friends. It was kind of a woman-power thing, years ago before all the stuff people have been addressing now. The artist, Aleah Chapin, is an amazing person. To me it’s the whole package.”
Brian and Mike first saw Chapin’s work at the New York Academy of Arts several years ago. After wandering through the various spaces and seeing work by first and second year students in various stages of progress, they noticed a painting that a young artist who was getting her MFA, Chapin, was working on. Some time later, Brian saw another piece of Chapin’s become available through Flowers Gallery in London. The couple decided to buy it, since it had been on their minds all that time. A few months later she was announced as a finalist for the 2012 BP Portrait Award in London, and eventually she was named the winner for the piece that Brian and Mike had seen back at NYAA. “The prices for her art went through the roof, if you could even get them,” says Brian. “We loved the piece we bought, number one, and we wanted it for that reason, but it’s fun to think we did a good job identifying it early on. I’m delighted that we have this in our house.”
For Mike, he says he loves the back-story about the painting’s subjects as well as the tale of how they found it, but ultimately he just likes how it looks. “It’s great to have that history behind the painting, but I don’t need that to appreciate this. That’s what I think I miss in abstract art – I feel like I can’t appreciate it unless I always know everything about the artist and all the elements of the work. For me hopefully any one of these works [at home] stands on their own. You can love or hate it, but you don’t necessarily need to know the details to really appreciate it.”
Brian agrees, “There’s enough art out there for everybody. You can pick your own style and decide what you like. For us, this is what we love.”
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Season of Art: Five to Talk to – Nikko Washington","excerpt":"","body":"
Fall offers a full slate of exhibitions across galleries and museums throughout the Midwest. Behind the scenes, many people in the community are working tirelessly to support artists and bring fresh perspectives to the public. We spoke with five insiders about what excites them now and what they anticipate next.
The following preview is one of five conversations that appear in CGN's Fall 2026 magazine. To receive a copy of the print edition click here.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1789517637/noxz9olp47gfneafz8xg.jpg\")
“I’m thrilled to further expand my artistic and design practice by introducing other mediums into the mix. I’m looking forward to watching the seasons change and devoting a lot of time in the studio as well. Fall/winter is my favorite time to create new works.
I have an upcoming solo show with VSG Contemporary that I am excited about. The work will delve further into the topics of cultural mythology and how these tales and narratives have helped shape my worldview.
Also, it wouldn’t be right if I left out my excitement for this upcoming season of Chicago sports.”
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961823/s3lp0uull2s8mvd8funj.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Extension Cords, Glazed stoneware, chrome, Sizes vary 2021-present. Photo: Mikey Mosher
This interview is part of CGN's Fall 2026 issue. Purchase a copy or subscribe.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961824/mghrpnghxd9j9ko2dsjt.jpg\")
Andi Crist
BY ALISON REILLY
Andi Crist’s warm, engaging demeanor is evident in the first few minutes of our conversation. Generous with her time and forthcoming in her observations, she cares deeply about building relationships through her art making. Crist grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, devoured art classes, wrote songs and played music in high school, and moved to Chicago to study visual art at Columbia College. In 2024, she received her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a woodworker, sculptor, ceramicist, and conceptual artist, and she teaches at Illinois Institute of Technology. We discussed her multidisciplinary practice, her experience working as an art handler, preparator, and fabricator, and how she thinks about labor, creativity, and value in the art world.
CGN: You grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. How did that environment shape your point of view as an artist?
Andi Crist: That’s such a funny question. Nobody’s ever really asked.
CGN: Oh, really?
AC: Yeah, maybe because I never was super connected with the arts community down in Birmingham. I moved to Chicago in 2007, so it’s been 20 years since I lived in the South. I was definitely one of those art kids—one art credit was required in high school, and I graduated with like seven. I was surrounded by artists who had a big impact on me, because they were working artists. All my art teachers were trained in Alabama and then continued to teach and work in Alabama, which gave me this desire to try to expand my community outside of what I was familiar with.
CGN: Do you identify as a Chicagoan?
AC: My family still lives in Alabama, and I go back every year. I love being in Alabama. Maybe now being in Chicago for almost 20 years, I identify as a southerner living in the city. I carry on the social qualities of a friendly southern person [laughs].
CGN: You have a varied art practice—woodwork, ceramics, mold making. What drew you to those types of fabrication methods and that type of art making?
AC: My dad is a carpenter and a hobbyist woodworker, but his career was psychology, and my mom was a professor and an incredible craftswoman. I absorbed my mom’s model of creativity, which is to try a bunch of different things and not necessarily finish them but to try to learn as much as I can by just going for it. My practice over the years has become an exploration of conceptual elements of what makes art art and not just craft. Do you have to be a master craftsperson or a professional artist in order to make something that resonates with people?
I make a lot of work that references the mode of making and requires a variety of different media. I just finished teaching a ceramics production class where students learned how to produce molds, think about positives and negatives, and get into a level of production rather than just handicraft as a way to multiply their output.
I got into fabrication because I’ve always liked working with other artists. I have a background in theater and gallery work. I’m a voracious learner, and I like being able to share those skills with my community. Then I end up making work about that. It’s a self-feeding cycle.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961825/zzejqwibga5f5wk6einh.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Artist’s Ladder, 2023. Photo: Jeff Perlman
CGN: Thinking about your background as an art handler and preparator—how did you get to the point where you were making work about that experience?
AC: In 2010, right before I graduated from Columbia, I was living in a storefront in West Logan Square with my partner at the time. We started a gallery called Autotelic in the space and had to build it out using the worst tools with very minimal resources. Then we started curating shows there and that meant helping other artists figure out how to install their work in our unusual space. Eventually, I gained the reputation for knowing how to do that type of work. I started getting invited to work in museums and galleries.
The Holocaust Museum was the first museum I worked at, and as difficult as that subject matter is, that experience was really important to me because I was learning more about the larger world of gallery work. As an artist working as a preparator, you’re straddling both sides of that space. You’re really seeing how the sausage is made. You’re hearing all the conversations about artists, curators, the process of exhibition making. There is a lot of information you can gather about the economics of the art world by just being the person that has the know-how to touch and handle artwork. Eventually that started feeding into my art practice because I wanted to make work that was contributing to a conversation around art as a type of job. It fueled a methodology of seeing everything in the world as the result of a long line of processes that required effort and thoughtfulness by many hands.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961826/uv5bysb5fbne30gr5czh.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Fair Warning, 2025.
CGN: The title of your recent exhibition at the Cleve Carney Museum—Live, Laugh, Lo—sorry, not Live, Laugh, Love—Live, Laugh, Labor.
AC: [Laughs] That’s what everybody does.
CGN: I love the title—it’s perfect. You incorporate humor along with thoughtful critiques about labor and value in your work. What role does humor play? How does it help you connect with your audience?
AC: One of my biggest criticisms of art with a capital A is how easily it can be overly intellectualized. I think that’s why I end up making a lot of work that references things that already exist or have some kind of real purpose. It’s important to give people a foothold so there’s an obvious place to board that train of thought. As an artist—maybe this is me getting into a sweeping argument about what artists should be—but I personally believe in intellectual accessibility. Humor is a swift way to drop defenses and allow people to come in without feeling like they are not getting the joke or not understanding. I like to make work that can hold both of those things at the same time—it’s funny on the surface level, it’s kind of cheeky, but there’s also another way to look at it that is intellectually clever. There is a joy in the attempt to “get it”. Like the satisfaction of grasping how a crossword puzzle actually works.
It’s also so much a part of my personality. I take myself seriously as an artist, but my ego isn’t at the heart of it. It’s really something that I do because I love to make things, and I love to connect with other people. My parents raised me on puns, creating those language relationships between things and people and space. Understanding a joke is the same way that we understand art, and while neither of my parents would consider themselves artists, they taught me how to think about art.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961828/gnotyfijabr7e15kb6hm.jpg\")
Andi Crist, 69 Bananas
CGN: Your work, Artist’s Ladder, explores hierarchies, workplace cultures, and institutional values. What experiences shaped your reflections on these themes?
AC: The ladder piece distinctly represents the complicated relationship between front of house, back of house, and the hierarchy of labor. Who is the artist in those relationships? How much does another person’s knowledge and expertise contribute to the success of another artist?
There are enormous, industrialized art practices out there, warehouses full of people making things, and those people are also artists. When you make work that involves other people, it’s important to acknowledge their contributions. I’ve had complicated interactions with other artists who are like, ‘Hey, do you want to collaborate with me on this thing?’ but really they just want me to make their idea. I made Artist’s Ladder while I was in grad school at UIC, and it really represented my relationship with a lot of other artists, because I could be an actual support structure for them. Then it turned into this absurd physical thing. It’s extremely overbuilt with inlaid racing stripes made of exotic hardwood, and a butcher’s block-style plaid top. It’s not really like an FU as much as it is asking for acknowledgement of my skills and the essential support structures that exist.
CGN: I want to ask you about another piece, Five O’Clock Somewhere, a wool rug that resembles a children’s play mat. I work at a library, and it reminded me of rugs I see all the time. It’s a peaceful image of an office park with a large fountain surrounded by a parking lot. I’m curious why you chose a rug as the medium to depict that image.
AC: To me the heart of that joke was that it was a landscape. I wanted it to be physically traversable. And that was, I don’t want to say controversial, but it was something that I had to talk about a lot. The critique of that work was the fact that I didn’t want to hang it on the wall and turn it into a tapestry. I really wanted it to be a rug that people could walk on. When I showed that work at Chicago Artists Coalition for the New City Breakout Artists show. There was a lot of pushback about having it on the floor and allowing people to walk on it.
That, to me, was such an important conversation, because, in my mind, the fact that you could walk across it and traverse it was part of how I was thinking about the object. Rugs are utilitarian–they are floor coverings. When you make art that doesn’t do anything, you don’t get to participate in that part of the conversation.
I enjoy sparring around art like that. I am totally tickled by the pushback. The critique of display is exciting, and sorting through the politics of utilitarianism in art spaces is fun to me. And then—it was so crazy—we ended up showing it halfway on the wall and halfway on the ground.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961829/r1zylkwfw9rkw191skdl.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Five O’Clock Somewhere, on display at Live, Laugh, Labor: Thoughts on Usefulness and Other Myths at The Cleve Carney Museum of Art, 2025.
CGN: Oh, wow.
AC: I was like, this is the epitome of compromise! I had to build a structure so that it could hang that way safely.
CGN: I would say just put it on the ground if that’s what you want to do. It’s interesting that there are still very fixed ideas about the way that art should be displayed.
AC: That preparator part of it, that’s what I’m all about. I was having that conversation about what physically supports the work or what conceptually supports it in the way that it’s shown.
CGN: Have you always been a writer? How do your art and writing practices work together?
AC: I can’t say that I’m a writer, it’s probably the same way that it can feel weird to call yourself an artist. But I feel like I’ve always been relatively good at writing. The first time I ever did any kind of professional writing was contributing, a long time ago, to a website called eHow. The editors would send me a title, and then I would have to research how to do that thing. Then I would write out step-by-step instructions for how to do that.
I think that’s how I had to make myself think through my conceptual practice—I had to do the research, coagulate that into some kind of document, and then I would have stream-of-consciousness conversations with myself. “Why are we interested in this? Why would we make it this way? What would I want to talk about if someone were to ask me about this?” It’s almost like I was pre-interviewing myself.
I think the writing is just another way for me to process that idea before I put in all of the time and energy to actually accomplish it.
CGN: What are you working on right now? What projects do you have coming up?
AC: The biggest project that I have right now is my house. My family and I suffered a major house fire on New Year’s Day. We’ve been displaced since then and are navigating rebuilding our house. It was a total loss.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961830/kekfqzf9f87fq48juogh.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Single-Use Fireplace, 2025. Photo: Mikey Mosher.
CGN: I’m so sorry to hear that.
AC: Thank you. We’re all okay, but it’s been a really tumultuous year. I moved my studio into a storefront last summer, and so most of my, at least relatively recent, work is safe, and I still have all of my materials, but my home life is starting over. I just had my first full year at this space, and it’s got a little gallery built out in the front called Coming Soon. It’s beautiful with floor-to-ceiling windows on Division and Central Park. I’ve been inviting people into the space to try things out.
After teaching the ceramics class, I came into a bunch of nice slip casting molds, and I’m making some really playful, weird, ceramic stuff. I want to be open and not put too much pressure on myself. Having a big studio by myself is very expensive, so it’s easy to want to make it feel like it’s worth it. But if for now all I can do is make it a resource for other people, then that will be the thing I do. Be less selfish, but more selfish with my time. Saying I can’t do that, or I don’t want to do that. It’s not my nature to say no—I’m such a yes man. I’m learning how to be a yes man for myself.
CGN: That makes sense after going through something so traumatic.
AC: I have an amazing support system. Our friends started a GoFundMe. It was incredible. I’m so humbled and floored by how held I felt by Chicago. I can’t help but throw a little shout out to my Chicago people. I can see how people’s lives get totally ruined by this kind of tragedy. I feel so lucky. Chicago definitely showed its love back.
CGN: For your project Coming Soon, are you bringing in other artists?
AC: My philosophy is that I want to be involved as little as possible. I am thinking about it more as a hosted than curated space. I’m actively soliciting proposals or ideas for workshops, meetings, book clubs—I’m down for making it a resource, whatever that means. I don’t want to over-think it, I want it to be an intuitive and organic thing, which is why I call it Coming Soon—it can be a placeholder for anything. It’s exciting. Taking my hands off the reins is a good exercise for me.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961831/gno5dhliwfnzpuaim78s.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Extension Cords, Glazed stoneware, chrome, Sizes vary 2021-present. Photo: Mikey Mosher
Fall offers a full slate of exhibitions across galleries and museums throughout the Midwest. Behind the scenes, many people in the community are working tirelessly to support artists and bring fresh perspectives to the public. We spoke with five insiders about what excites them now and what they anticipate next.
The following preview is one of five conversations that appear in CGN's Fall 2026 magazine. To receive a copy of the print edition click here.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1789516769/izokunnmrufdyjbjnypk.jpg\")
“Intuit Art Museum’s renovated, expanded spaces give audiences the chance to connect with art through daily art-making, third Thursday Art After Work, group Slow Looks designed to provide a mindful experience with a single work and upcoming conversations with sculptor Bill Brady (Oct. 3) and Dr. Mary Trent (Oct. 15), who curated our current exhibition on the role of scrapbook-making in Henry Darger’s art.
On view is the thought-provoking Monumental: The Sculpture of Dr. Charles Smith, which encourages guests to consider the lack of historical representation of African Americans and Black people in America. Dr. Smith’s memorials champion Black history and stories of everyday life he sees missing in mainstream narratives.
This fall we’re opening an exhibition of paintings by Karla Wong, an artist who immigrated from Oaxaca and who explores themes of life and death, gender identity and self-discovery.”