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By GINNY VAN ALYEA
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Walking through the glass door into Carrie Secrist’s eponymous gallery on a summer afternoon, the calm inside is a welcome respite from the frenzy that has encroached on the West Loop, an arts district that used to feel more removed from the traditional heart of the city, but which is now booming with new restaurants, hotels and condos on nearly every available corner. The gallery offers open space that is in short supply these days. At least 70 of Dannielle Tegeder’s framed, abstract works are hung salon-style, filling the west wall with various colors and shapes that invite closer viewing – an unconventional arrangement and an appealing style indicative of Secrist’s lively program, which she has honed over 25 years.
\r\n","body":"By GINNY VAN ALYEA
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Walking through the glass door into Carrie Secrist’s eponymous gallery on a summer afternoon, the calm inside is a welcome respite from the frenzy that has encroached on the West Loop, an arts district that used to feel more removed from the traditional heart of the city, but which is now booming with new restaurants, hotels and condos on nearly every available corner. The gallery offers open space that is in short supply these days. At least 70 of Dannielle Tegeder’s framed, abstract works are hung salon-style, filling the west wall with various colors and shapes that invite closer viewing – an unconventional arrangement and an appealing style indicative of Secrist’s lively program, which she has honed over 25 years.
\r\n\r\nSeated at a large table in an office area filled with art books, Secrist looks at once like a laidback farmer, clad in a pair of overalls she loves to wear while gardening, as well as like the bright and chic art dealer she is, donning her signature short blond hair and a wide grin.
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25 years in the gallery business have flown by. Secrist got her first job after college while wandering through the Whitney Museum in New York. After chatting up a curator, she was offered a position, on the spot, in the museum’s education department. That encounter was a serendipitous start to her career, one that would be filled with connections, as well as risks, in the pursuit of art.
\r\n\r\nAfter a short time in New York, once she experienced the challenges of surviving in Manhattan on an intern’s salary, Secrist’s path led back to her hometown of Chicago, where she soon found herself directing a gallery when she was just 23. Secrist had been charting a professional art course since before she started college, when she and her parents discussed the importance of balancing her focus on art and business. In Chicago she was introduced to Natalie van Straaten – then publisher of Chicago Gallery News and Executive Director of the Chicago Art Dealers Association – who connected her with Steve Berkowitz and Kathy Cottong at the Center for Contemporary Art (CCA). They hired Secrist as an art handler, a role which remains to this day her favorite part of her job. She says, “Actually hanging exhibitions and working with the artists is what I like best.”
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From there, she says, she quickly ascended the ranks to become the assistant director at CCA, only to see the gallery close its doors in the early 1990s. Soon, her next opportunity knocked when collectors she had met through CCA wanted to open a new space, and they asked Secrist to be the director. She recalls, “I was 23 and naïve, so I said, ‘Yes! I can do that!’” The space, known initially as Gallery A, launched in River North in November 1992. Within a year Secrist found that she and the gallery owners wanted to pursue different directions for the program, and her family ended up buying the gallery outright. She says, “At that time that basically meant buying the office computer. Everything kind of went from there.”
\r\n\r\nSecrist was fortunate to receive valuable advice from a group of dealers who helped her understand fundamentals about operating a gallery, from using transparencies to the importance of sending hand written letters. She says, “I owe a great deal to people like Rhona Hoffman, Paul Gray of Richard Gray, Donald Young, and River North neighbors such as Phyllis Kind, Roberta Lieberman of Zolla/Lieberman, Catherine Edelman, and Ann and Roy Boyd.” Secrist was the youngest of the dealers at that time, and she was grateful for the support for her program early on. Prominent collectors, including Susan and Lew Manilow, Donna and Howard Stone, and Linda and Paul Gottskind, also took interest in the burgeoning program. Secrist admits she still does many things the old school way, a trait she owes to the group that mentored her when she got started.
\r\n\r\nContinuing to learn from colleagues, Secrist had settled into a routine of running the gallery when she realized she was ready to change the name from Gallery A to Carrie Secrist Gallery. She explains, “For a long time I wasn’t ready to put my name on the door, and so many galleries, especially in Chicago, start with a name that is not their own. The transition from being a person with a name to having that name become a physical place remains, to this day, strange for me.”
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Many changes have taken place during Secrist’s 25 years running a gallery, including a relocation to her current space in the West Loop at 835 W. Washington in 2003, but she cites two shifts that are universally acknowledged among those in the gallery world, “There are two truly double-edged swords: the Internet and art fairs. Art fairs are now where I begin relationships with new collectors – probably 80 percent or potentially more, and it begins a relationship that we really count on.” By keeping up with the art fairs, Secrist says she also has the chance to connect with colleagues from all around the world and stay abreast of what everyone is doing, despite the expense of participating in and shipping to the fairs.
\r\n\r\nThe downside of the art fair frenzy can be laborious as well as expensive. Secrist shares, “I might have an impressive, monumental sculpture that I know this collector will love and want, and they live maybe 20 minutes from the gallery. I urge them to come in, but they’ll say, ‘We’ll see it in Miami!’”
\r\n\r\nSecrist credits early local support as critical to getting her start, but today she also values the unique and dynamic art community of dealers in Chicago such as Monique Meloche, Julie and Shane Campbell, John Corbett and Jim Dempsey of Corbett vs Dempsey, Scott Speh of Western Exhibitions, and 835 W. Washington neighbors Andrew Rafacz, Tom McCormick and Kavi Gupta among others. She says it’s also exciting to see the new generation coming up – Regards, PATRON, Aspect/Ratio, and DOCUMENT – and she hopes to be supportive to them the way her colleagues were to her early on.
\r\n\r\nBut keeping up with others does not mean following the crowd. Secrist says, “One thing that has remained constant for me is that I tend to show art that is a slow look. Work tends to have a very strong artist hand in it, and it can look very different in person than a quick in and out of a fair booth.” Secrist’s art fair booths tend towards the immersive and conceptual, so visitors are compelled to participate in her installations and spend more than a few seconds looking at it. She explains, “Especially over the last few years, every booth we’ve designed, and each gallery exhibition, we’ve tried to have the production value feel like a museum installation. We have also been doing more solo booths, where we give an artist a challenge, for instance, showing an entirely new medium, or creating a standout presentation that will linger. No matter how the actual sales go, it’s a curatorial experience that will make people stop and remember.”
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nI tend to show art that is a slow look. –Carrie Secrist
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She acknowledges, “One reason why we do this has to do with the other biggest change to our business since I started – the Internet. It’s fantastic that people, every minute of every day, in every country, can look up online what our current exhibition is and see new work, but we don’t want them to stop there. People feel they have seen the exhibition online, but they haven’t. And pardon my French, so often what I show appears like shit online [laughs], and you can’t begin to get the nuances digitally.” Secrist confesses, and her staff concurs, that she is not technologically savvy, which may motivate her to try to impress visitors with what they can see in person rather than on a screen.
\r\n\r\nSecrist has seen the Chicago art scene boom and evolve over the years. She remembers, “When I opened there was really one contemporary art fair and that was Art Chicago. People anticipated it all year long, it was such an event. Now there are 2-3 significant fairs around the world every quarter.” The complexities of a strong market-focus, which has largely come out of the proliferation of art fairs, are apparent in a story she recalls about encountering a collector who once bought several works by an artist solely because they were told the value of the artist’s work would greatly multiply after it was part of a museum show. Secrist says her aim is to be able to help people understand and love art for many reasons that go beyond art market factors.
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Secrist embraces art that is equally weighted between a visual experience and a richer conceptual connection, and she likes to reference the open atmosphere of early 19th century salons. The participatory productions she hosts at the gallery are designed to motivate people to show up and see art together, bringing a changing collective perspective to each show. Secrist explains, “We’ve done a lot of different performative things, like when artist Diana Guerrero-Macià, with her musician husband, Joe Adamik, created a series of artist made drum sets. Throughout the whole exhibition of her other work, which were mostly tapestries, we had a call and response session with other famous drummers. When we opened the show and held the sessions last fall, the week after the [presidential] election, all sorts of people – from children to seniors – came together to listen to the drums. It really felt like a gathering and an exchange.” Incorporating these performances and backdrops are a way to bring people into Secrist’s space to participate in art, and it’s a means to help artists expand their practice as well as their thinking.
\r\n\r\nSecrist is celebrating the gallery’s 25th anniversary in several ways. For the gallery’s EXPO CHICAGO booth (Sept 13-17) she explains, “We’re presenting a curated exhibition of select artists who will create work to commemorate this milestone. The comprehensive installation will include a wide range of media and each artist will be represented with art work that includes, or relates to, a metallic motif. We are also considering creating a reflective wall treatment in the booth to literally and figuratively include visitors within the experience. This offers a contemporary twist on a tradition, dating back to the Roman Empire, of exchanging symbolic elements for specific anniversaries. In this case, the element of silver will honor the interactions of the gallery, its artists and its audience in present time as well as over a quarter century of evolution.” There will be an expanded presentation of the fair booth concept in the gallery in November for the actual anniversary.
\r\n\r\nThough art is with her every waking hour, Secrist has one other passion she gravitates to often. She shares, “I am a crazy gardener. I paint with flowers. My husband and I acquired the property next door to us, and I’m turning it into a fantastic secret garden, and eventually a small artist residence.” Catching Secrist at an art fair in towering shoes and her unique couture choices is a chance to admire her sense of style, but she admits, “If I’m not in art clothes, I am basically in overalls. And sometimes I’m in both, because I have like 20 pairs, including the dress ones. Getting in the mud makes me happy.” 25 years after diving into gallery life, Secrist indeed has weathered the floods as well as the droughts, but she has found her calling as one who passionately tends to artists, as well as collectors, and helps them all thrive in her garden.
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Top image: CARRIE SECRIST GALLERY BOOTH AT EXPO CHICAGO 2016, featuring an installation by Shannon Finley
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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.”