![\"\"](\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/958/original/bas-10yr-lumpymorsel-install5-crop2-300dpi-1024.jpg\")
By LAURA M. METTAM
\r\n\r\nChicago-based Claire Ashley’s work blurs the lines between painting, sculpture, installation, and performance. It evokes feelings of playfulness and curiosity; a desire to touch and feel and interact. It’s fun. The artist has stated that contemporary art takes itself too seriously, and her work is the perfect antidote for this plague.
\r\n","body":"By LAURA M. METTAM
\r\n\r\n*An edited version of this interview was orginally published in the January-April 2016 issue of Chicago Gallery News. Top Image: Claire Ashley, Installation shot, distant landscapes: peep dyed crevice hot pink ridge, 2013, Icebox Project Space, Crane Arts, Philadelphia, PA. Photo courtesy of IceBox Project Space.
\r\n\r\nClaire Ashley’s work blurs the lines between painting, sculpture, installation, and performance. It evokes feelings of playfulness and curiosity; a desire to touch and feel and interact. It’s fun. The artist has stated that contemporary art takes itself too seriously, and her work is the perfect antidote for this plague.
\r\n\r\nHer well-known inflatable forms resemble almost-familiar bodily shapes and cartoon-like figures. Other pieces are worn as costumes or operate as gigantic fluorescent vessels powered by people. Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. and beyond within renowned art institutions, as a part of residency programs, and in site-specific installations and performances.
\r\n\r\nAshley hails from Edinburgh, Scotland, and she currently lives and works in Chicago where she teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Grays School of Art in Aberdeen, Scotland, and a Masters of Fine Arts from SAIC. She is represented by Galleri Urbane Marfa + Dallas (TX), and has an ongoing relationship with Oak Park, IL-based Terrain, an exterior exhibition space run by Sabina Ott.
\r\n\r\nLearn more at www.claireashley.com.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n
LM: You are from Edinburgh, Scotland. Tell me about your journey to Chicago - what led you here?
\r\n\r\nCA: I came to Chicago in the fall of 1993, when I was 21, to attend grad school. The previous summer I met Martin Prekop, Dean of SAIC at that time, and Susan Kraut, SAIC Faculty in Painting and Drawing, at Hospitalfield House (a summer school for eight Scottish art students) in Arbroath, Scotland. That meeting and subsequent mentorship changed my path entirely.
\r\n\r\nIn Chicago I was introduced to the Hairy Who and the Chicago Imagists among many other artists. The idea that art could include humor, irreverent imagery, and absurdity as content blew my mind. Coming from Scotland, with the dark and somber influence of the figurative social realist work of the Glasgow Boys, the Hairy Who’s work opened up a whole new universe for me. It allowed me to bring the self deprecating sarcasm of Scotland, and the humor of my family in particular, into my thinking, and subsequently into my abstract-based but oddly figural work. I should also mention that working with Phil Hanson, Steve Beal, Ray Yoshida, Susanne Doremus, Michiko Itatani, and Jim Lutes among others at SAIC in the mid-1990s, was an incredibly important part of my introduction to the wondrous possibilities of figuration and abstraction in contemporary practice.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Thoughts on Chicago's art community?
\r\n\r\nChicago has been my home now for almost 23 years. I love the friendly openness and generosity of the people in this city. I love its work ethic and working-class roots and I am excited about the energy and vitality that the next generation of artists, curators, and critics are bringing to the city.
\r\n\r\n![\"\"](\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/959/original/lanklimplemonssuck-youngworldinternational-install29-1024-300dpi-sharp.jpg\")
\r\n\r\n
How has your work evolved over the years? Describe what your work is about.
\r\n\r\nMy work is about odd bodies and ecstatic life – humanity’s largess, variety, procreative power, and the possible anthropomorphic mutations that occur when mashing up amoebas, cartoons, animals, vehicles, and human bodies. I want humor, absurdity, empathy, and play to be integral to the work as a foil for the monumental scale and abstract pattern (people always want to touch or hug the sculptures or throw themselves onto them like a bounce house).
\r\n\r\nI think contemporary art takes itself way too seriously - so much so, that we lose viewers. I am interested in creating democratic access to my work by utilizing a deliberately egalitarian and generous collection of humorous, visceral, and empathetic connections between the viewer and the object, as well as formal entry points for multiple communities to engage with the work.
\r\n\r\nI hope to create a sense of the uncanny within the sculptural forms, where they are recognized by the viewer as abstract and figural at the same time. The audience is an active participant in the exhibitions and performances I produce. They push against the forms, touch their surfaces, laugh at their incongruity, and sometimes enter into or dance within the forms themselves. In short they complete the work. In general, my particular relationship to painting makes me want painting to push against its immense history, to use its essential power (color, surface, mark, image – all forms of communication) to infiltrate other media and material to create hybrids, to procreate without reserve, and in some mangled Darwinian way continue to exist forcefully in the universe, even if its existence is more like something out of an absurdist play (i.e. Ionesco’s The Rhinoceros).
\r\n\r\nMy work has evolved from the experience of having kids and being a parent into an examination of domestic objects of comfort and play. This impetus led me to explore forms that included: things in my home; things related to my kids; and things related to protection. I began by cutting silhouette shapes taken from fragments of architectural photographs of my home and shapes loosely reminiscent of cartoon characters as a starting point or pattern from which an inflatable form was then stitched. These architectural fragments once inflated became figurative: a reference to the people who dwell inside and the thing that makes a house a home. This discovery process led to my current body of work.
\r\n\r\nI work with inflatables for a number of reasons. My first introduction to the form was through watching my kids play on numerous bounce houses when they were little. The second introduction was through a co-teacher here at SAIC who taught a short inflatable exercise years ago which inspired me to think about it as a solution to art making. I was excited about the potential to make large-scale sculptural forms that were soft and lightweight, that could be folded up when not installed (I have a very small studio, so storage is a premium), and that were implicitly playful and humorous. That initial interest led to discoveries in the studio about how they could then also become surfaces to paint on. This was a very important discovery for me, because even though I am trained as a painter I have never been content with painting on a flat surface, or with a straight edge. So this new hybrid painted form was exciting to find. I should also say that I have an equally hard time with the traditions of monumental sculpture i.e. heavy, static, monochromatic form. So all of these factors made it feel like a pretty perfect solution to the demands for my work. I find the inflatable form compelling, as it exists in two states: both as flaccid skin and taught volume. I like to think of the polarities of form within these objects as metaphors for our bodies: inhaling/exhaling; taught/wrinkled skin; flaccid/erect organs.
\r\n\r\nI also work with a number of different materials in addition to the large-scale inflatables. I make small stuffed and plaster forms that echo the color palette and forms of the larger inflatables – they act like the offspring of the large mother forms. I have also made miniature sculpey forms that I use as props or characters for video and photography (I think of this work as somewhat like family photographs or home videos of one’s offspring), and large scale bound and wrapped sculptural grids that act as skeleton-like forms – the interior structure of the mangled bodies of the large inflatable mother forms. I think of all of the work as being connected somehow.
\r\n\r\n![\"\"](\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/961/original/limesandbrickssuckpink-claireashley.jpg\")
\r\n\r\n
Tell me how your work is made. How many of these works are constructed with a clear vision of their end form? Do you ever start a piece without a specific plan for its final shape, and just figure it out as you go? What are the steps in your process?
\r\n\r\nI use the materials, practically speaking, because they are cheaper than traditional fine art materials, and when you work at the scale I do, you really have to take cost into consideration. On another level, I use readily available materials because I want the philosophical underpinnings of my work to be embodied by the material itself. Using PVC-coated canvas tarpaulin (house painters use this to protect floors), Rust-Oleum spray paint, duct tape, kids backpacks, and personal blower fans, becomes one way to do that. On a third level, I am interested in the magical, transformative alchemy that happens when these relatively unconnected, and very mundane materials are brought together to make my particular version of painting and sculpture.
\r\n\r\nI make a lot of drawings and sketches of possible silhouette shapes that might become sculptural objects but I don’t make models or macquettes. There's always an unknown component to the forms as I make them because going from flat to volume isn't a science (the way I do it anyway) so I usually consider the piece a success if there is a surprise when it get's inflated and if there is something that happens in the painting of it I didn't expect. This creates an energy or presence that is beyond me and my control. I get bored pretty quickly, so I often change the way a piece is installed each time I show it, such that I see it with fresh eyes and I get a few varieties of form or presence within one piece. I value each part of my process immensely for different reasons.
\r\n\r\nThere are four parts in my mind: drawing (a.), constructing (b.), painting (c.), and performing/installing/site-ing (d.).
\r\n\r\na. The thinking through drawing period is less physically taxing and more peaceful in some sense. It is a place for a combination of intuitive shapes and mark making to occur, for observed fragments of things from my surroundings to be made, for cultural source material to be appropriated, and quirky pairings of shapes to be invented. This discovery process, with a simple pencil and paper, is the bedrock of the work.
\r\n\r\nb. Constructing the form itself is an incredibly laborious, physically challenging, and often mind-bending task to imagine how the pattern pieces will come together into the final form. The sewing happens on the concrete studio floor because the material is relatively heavy so it’s literally back breaking work. I sew the pieces in panels that become each side of the form. Each facing side is usually constructed to have a particular silhouette that matches, in order for there to be a symmetry of sorts (often interrupted) in how the piece comes together as a volume. The image I have in my head is not a static thing, and the process of construction is constantly being tweaked. These forms are never quite known to me until the last seam has been sealed and the fan turns on. I should say that sometimes I am not totally enamored with the form's essential shape, but I know that in the next step of the process that can be wrestled with using paint.
\r\n\r\nc. Once construction is complete, the painting and color invention on the surface begins. This layering process happens over the course of a number of days. Each pass of paint is a relatively quick process, but a deadly one. I wear a full respirator mask and enclosed goggles. Sometimes the form is gathered flat on the studio floor and painted while deflated, and at other times the piece is inflated in my yard and painted using stencils, and ladders to reach high enough. I often turn the fan on/off to inflate/deflate the form while painting. This increases the number of folds the spray paint picks up to complicate the surface of the form, and camouflage its shape ostensibly. The painting allows me to pull sections of the form out into the foreground of the visual encounter and push other areas back to recede into the background of the encounter. The shape can change immensely just because of the location and intensity of the painting on it. In this way I’m often able to resurrect a form that I am not particularly persuaded by and surprise myself in the creation of each new work.
\r\n\r\nd. Now we have a painted form. The final part of my process is to decide how these forms enter the world. Is it through humorous eruption into song and dance, or obnoxious scale relative to site, or squeezing, stacking, piling into space? This contextual component of the work is a moving target depending on the parameters of the exhibition or event. The forms I make do not need to be installed the same way each time they are shown, but some do exist as relatively static objects, while others exist as wearable sculptures for the body, and often they can be interchangeable. If the form is to be worn, then I must make entry points for the body to fit. These openings I think of as udders, anuses, or birthing canals as much as a reference to putting on a sweater.
\r\n\r\n![\"\"](\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/955/original/rud-comp2-300dpi-medium-large.jpg\")
\r\n\r\n
For your art objects that involve a human element - with one person or numerous people inside of them, bringing them to life - are these objects designed to be open for anyone to use? Are they designed for specific individuals in mind? Who are the mysterious beings inside them – do people approach you with requests to collaborate, or do you seek out volunteers?
\r\n\r\nGood question! I have had an array of people trained and untrained dancing in these forms. I don’t make them specifically for one individual. For the really large twelve person pieces (Ruddy Udder and My Little Pony) I ask for volunteers at the site, city, or event where it gets performed. I can teach twelve volunteers the simple (and hokey) line dance to the kitsch country song Good Times by Alan Jackson in an hour or so. These pieces have been performed in multiple venues across the country.
\r\n\r\nFor the two smaller single person forms I usually work with trained dancers to create a choreographed sequence of activity in response to a particular piece of audio. The most recent version was a collaboration with Joshua Patterson a sound and performance artist in Chicago for Double Disco: Aurora Borealis that was performed at Disjecta Contemporary Art Center in Portland, OR and here in Chicago at SAIC’s 150th Block Party event. For that event we also collaborated with Justin Deschamps (a dancer and member of ATOM-R performance group here in Chicago) and Jason Schroeder (an artist and life model here in Chicago).
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Relating to my previous question about your wearable pieces, do you think of these as garments / fashion pieces, an interactive experience / installation / painting, a performance? Part of their beauty is that they overlap into all of these categories, but is there a particular genre in which you consider them to fall into more heavily?
\r\n\r\nWell, yes, as I mentioned earlier I want them to vibrate between all of those categories – as an implicit critique of what art making and painting specifically can be, as a way to bring pop culture and entertainment into a fine art conversation, and as a way to invite a larger public to contemplate fine art – but in essence I definitely think of them as monumental paintings.
\r\n\r\n![\"\"](\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/957/original/lumpymorsels-slice5-300dpi-1024-exposure-20copy.jpg\")
\r\n\r\n
I love your use of vibrant colors against the contrasting stark whites of the bare fabric support. Can you discuss the fluorescent palette that is present in your work?
\r\n\r\nI use fluorescent spray paint and generally quite an acidic palette as a sort of gaudy camouflage on the inflatable’s skin that has both a day time and a night time state. On one level I will admit to really just loving this palette as a form of visual pleasure, but on another level, the loudness of the palette is something I use as a way to attract (or repulse) the viewer, forcing the forms to yell out at the world. The painted camouflage is a warning system that is brighter than most other things around it during the day and glows at night in black light much like a night club scene, however it is a lumbering mass of wobbling flesh on the dance floor rather than a cool kid.
\r\n\r\nI think of the color palette and the monumentality of the forms as having a relationship to the story of the Trojan horse, as I want the work to take up a lot of space both physically, visually, and psychologically. The Trojan horse idea plays into my thinking around the position of women artists in the contemporary art world – I want to be a bull in a china shop, as it were, to make my presence felt - to be brash, and irreverent, absurdly large and colorful in an often austere and minimal setting unleashing the forms dancing frenzy once inside.
\r\n\r\n![\"\"](\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/956/original/auroraborealis-saturday-2-coloradj-300dpi-1024.jpg\")
\r\n\r\n
What’s in store for you in 2016?
\r\n\r\nI’m having a solo show at Cleve Carney Art Gallery, McAninch Arts Center, College of Du Page, Glen Ellyn, IL called Lumpy Morsels, Hot Rocks opening in February. I’m collaborating with Ish Muhammed on a project for Indiana Bicentennial Celebration at the Indiana State Museum in March. I’ve been commissioned to make a new work for the CAFKA Biennial of Art in Public Places in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada in June.
\r\n\r\nAnd the group exhibition BLOW UP: Inflatable Contemporary Art continues its two-year travel schedule to:
\r\nHuntsville Museum of Art, AL - thru January 31, 2016
\r\nSchneider Museum of Art, OR - March 1 - May 1, 2016
\r\nBenton Museum of Art at UCONN - June 1 - July 31, 2016
\r\nElmhurst Art Museum, IL – September 1, 2016 – January 29, 2017
\r\n\r\n
![\"\"](\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/954/original/claireashley-manifesto.jpg\")
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.”