{"article":{"id":8352,"title":"Jacqueline Surdell: An Artist’s Voice Helps Scale Her Art","excerpt":"","body":"

Jacqueline Surdell. Photo by Dayson Emanuel Roa



Note: This interview is featured on the cover of CGN's Fall 2025 magazine. Click here to purchase a print copy and support CGN's work.



By ALISON REILLY


I spoke with Jacqueline Surdell in June as she was preparing for her first solo exhibition at Secrist | Beach, which opens on September 19. Surdell’s large-scale, vibrating tapestries showcase her physical discipline, ambitious vision, and influences from both the Dutch and Polish-Catholic sides of her family. In high school and college, Surdell played competitive volleyball, and her training as an athlete has informed her work just as much as her experience as a painter. We discussed how she became an artist, how she found and sharpened her artistic voice, and how she developed her process for creating monumental, woven work.



CGN: Did you grow up making art? 


Jacqueline Surdell: Yes and no. My grandmother is a landscape painter and artist. She’s Dutch, kind of an austere older woman, and she had a studio in her home. I thought it was this really magical place. I had undiagnosed ADHD and issues with reading, and I was really frustrated a lot of the time. She would make me make art with her. It was just something that we did together to bridge generational gaps. Going to museums together, she would challenge me on my random opinions, and so I think in some ways it was more about us having a relationship. She always told me, “You’re my reborn older soul.” 



CGN: What was her studio like? 


JS: It was so cool. After World War II, she moved with my opa to Toronto, then to Chicago, and then they opened an inn in Beaufort, South Carolina. They had this classic A-frame home on the marsh. It was a very different place from Chicago and really anywhere else in America or the world. The studio was up on the second floor in the corner. It had this really beautiful gray stone flooring and a beautiful skylight, and it was full of treasures. She was very much a collector. When I saw Lenore Tawney’s studio set up at Kohler [Arts Center], it reminded me a lot of my oma’s studio—bird’s nests, shark’s teeth, landscape paintings, other people’s art and photos, beautiful handwritten letters in cursive. I actually used to sleep in there.



View of works in progress by Jacqueline Surdell. Photo by Dayson Emanuel Roa



CGN: You studied at Occidental and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. How did you get there? When did you decide that you wanted to be an artist? 


JS: I always found a lot of value in painting. I was a portrait painter, and for me it was more about relationships. I had these really great high school teachers—Ms. Holloway and Mr. Harris. Russell Harris is a photorealism painter who works on the South Side of Chicago. He was one of my mentors, and the way he approached painting was very methodical. 

I was a volleyball player, and that was where I was successful. As a student who was otherwise struggling and very shy, I could be wild and crazy on the court, and I also felt that way in the studio. Not really wild and crazy, but I could let go. I played year-round competitive volleyball. I like to say I’m a 0 to 100 person. My mom says, “She’s one track Jack.” Once I decide I’m doing something, there’s no stopping me, I’m like a juggernaut down a hill. That was definitely the case with both art and volleyball. 


I went to college and played volleyball but had a horrible time with a new coach. She was really problematic, and we were investigated by the NCAA. It was really absurd, but it was very interesting to see this other side of sports—the reality of power dynamics and what it means to be at a school, which is really a business. It was interesting to learn that the hard way at 18. 


Sophomore year I was injured, and I was like “I hate this, I’m not going to play volleyball anymore.” I was also coming into my own as a student. I really loved learning and being good at school versus before I was very much going through the motions to get to volleyball practice. I was always a painter but then I went into sculpture, and I had this amazing professor, Mary Beth Heffernan, and she suggested, “Why don’t you use your physicality to work in the studio?” I thought that was a really good idea. Basically, I transferred it over. I have this very vivid memory of calling my dad and telling him, “I’m gonna be an art major, and I want to be an artist.” And he said, “Okay, we’ll support you. I know whatever you set your mind to, you’ll do it full force.”



View of a work in progress by Jacqueline Surdell. Photo by Dayson Emanuel Roa



CGN: Did you take time off before you went to SAIC? How did you decide to do the next step with graduate school? 


JS: I didn’t take time. I wish I did. And I was told to by everyone. To be honest, I had no concept of what it meant to be an artist. I would sit in Mary Beth’s office and ask her questions like, “What does it mean to be an artist?” Because for me it was always this Sunday painter hobby. The double-edged sword of having it so close with my grandmother was that it was something that I loved and saw all this value in, but I think my family perceived it as this nice thing that my oma also does, versus taking it seriously. I’d been in school my whole life. I clearly needed structure. She [Mary Beth] told me, “Get a studio, just get a studio and work.” And I was like, “What does that mean? I’ve been coached and taught my entire life. I don’t have my own voice.” 

I remember going to SAIC and the first day we were asked to present some of our work. Everyone’s work was so impressive, but what was more impressive was that everyone could talk about why they were making stuff. I was sitting there thinking, I don’t know why I made this. I can make up some shit, if you really want me to. I was also struggling with performance anxiety and wanting to sincerely and authentically and honestly talk about the work and not really knowing where it was coming from. It’s hard to have a sense of identity when you’re coming out of school and put on the mask your whole life of everything’s good, everything’s fine. Especially for volleyball—you put everything to the side when you get to the gym, which can be helpful if you know that you’re doing that. But if you don’t know that you’re doing that, you can forget who you are.


Self discovery was a large part of my grad school experience. I did a lot of video and performance and came out of it making really different work, but it was always connected to textiles and fiber. It was more finding the conceptual framework even if it was more identity-based because that’s always made more sense to me.



CGN: Do you feel like you have that voice now?


JS: Yes, I feel very confident in why I make the work and what it says. At the same time I do find myself separating the physicality of the work and the mental side of things. I do that on purpose, because it is so labor intensive. I’ve seen athletes talk about this, too, especially like football or contact sports where you have to enter into this sense of life or death. Don’t talk to me after a game, I’m not myself necessarily. I’m a goblin, a studio gremlin right now. I can’t be eloquent right now. I’m still honing my voice and trying to figure out exactly what that means. I would always say in volleyball, “I put my body where my mouth is—I’ll show you how hard I work.” My oma taught me, “Here’s art so you can express yourself, you don’t have to speak.” Not in a shut up way, but there are other means of expression that I found. That physicality or expressing myself through work is part of the voice. It’s a big part of it for me.


CGN: What is a typical day in your studio like?


JS: When I’m setting up, I’m building looms, ordering all these materials, trying to make sure I’m going to get all the packages in time, laying out the plastic, cleaning everything. And then once I’m set up, it kind of looks like a shit show in there, but basically I can stand in one place and reach everything I need. It might look crazy, but for me, it’s the perfect amount of controlled chaos. I usually get there around one or two p.m. and then work until midnight.


My studio is a big space, and it’s so nice to have it separated from my home, which is the opposite of what I had before. I can really focus and be very present. Before, my bed was upstairs and I would go downstairs and the work would be there. And I find them very sentient, so I feel like they would call to me, they’d say, “I’m not done.” Or I’d have some idea in the middle of the night, and I would just go do it downstairs and cut something apart. It’s three in the morning, and I’m like, “What am I doing?”



Above: Jacqueline Surdell, Suddenly, she was hell-bent and ravenous (after Giotto), 2024. Nylon cord, steel, polyester fabric, steel spool top, steel chain and meat hooks. 65 (body) x 252 (pole to pole) x 7 inches. Below: Detail of Suddenly, she was hell-bent and ravenous (after Giotto).




CGN: How did you start working on such a large scale? Is it monumental? They feel monumental to me. 


JS: I did make a monumental one. They feel really big. It’s funny, actually, the small ones are very difficult for me to make. I remember Daniel Quiles [Associate Professor, SAIC] was in my studio a couple of years ago, and he said, “How do you make sure it’s not just a bunch of material?” Sometimes with the smaller ones, it does lack that sense of close and distant space. The larger ones can enter into a landscape conversation because of that scale.

The first one I ever made was at Occidental, and it was a five by five foot piece, because I was painting on the other side of the canvas. I was looking at the weave of the canvas, and it was not happening, the painting was not good, and I could not figure it out. I knew I wanted to do something in landscape, but I didn’t know exactly what I was trying to say. Even just physically, it didn’t feel good or look good. I was looking at the grid of the canvas, thinking about why L.A. highways look the way they do and what a grid in a city means. I had never thought about Chicago being on a grid and then suddenly thinking everything is on a grid. Looking at Anni Albers and those kinds of artists and conversations around the grid from a weaving perspective. I flipped the canvas over, and I made a peg loom on the other side. The grid’s a really strong structure, and I thought I can evolve this, make it bigger. 


Last year Carrie Secrist opened a new space, Secrist | Beach, on Hubbard and asked me to make an in situ work for a survey exhibition, Making Time. That’s when I made this 30 by 20 foot piece, because I had the capacity to do so. I’ve always felt like a goldfish. I will grow to the size of space.



CGN: What are you working on right now, and what projects do you have coming up for this fall? 


JS: My solo show at Secrist | Beach opens September 19th, and we are also doing a solo booth at the Armory Show the first weekend of September. 



CGN: For your solo show, do you have a theme?


JS: I’m exploring landscape painting. I’m interested in landscapes as objects, but also thinking about them as the places that you live in and the romanticism of a painting versus actual nature. Britton Bertran [Director, Secrist | Beach] and I have been talking lot about, there’s this Latin phrase, “Natura Non Constristatur,” and it means something like nature doesn’t give a fuck about you. Natura Non Constristatur is the title of my co-curated group exhibition, opening alongside my solo presentation at Secrist | Beach on September 19th. I’ve asked a lot of questions about landscape and thinking about the forest as witness. Especially with these horrible times we’re in and this personal upheaval I’ve had this last year, who is witnessing that and what is the psychology of the forest of our mind—trauma and growth and entropy, something that’s dead that comes back to life. What is our capacity to hold or to be open, to change and to rest? Each piece is sort of an episode of a long HBO show. They’re like little movies for me, little stories, each one has their own narrative, a theme within the theme, if you will. 



CGN: Do you sketch before you start? You talked about getting the materials all set up, but before you get there, how are you mapping out your work?


JS: It depends on the piece usually, but they start honestly with a lot of Photoshop collages. A lot of times there’s woven fabric in these pieces, and they’re printed paintings or photographs that have to do with this narrative that I’ve ascribed to the piece itself, its identity. Sometimes the image is clear, and sometimes it’s obfuscated, it’s more about the color or the gesture at the end of it. They just need to begin, because there’s so much editing that happens throughout. The small ones actually helped me a lot, because I learned that there is something to this creation, building up of something small and then editing, cutting and taking away and finding new things, opening up negative space and things that couldn’t have been there without it being underneath something else, like a reveal or findings, a sense of discovery.


A lot of it is just the labor of getting started, which is again the loom process, and then there’s this period once they’re well on their way, well formed, on the loom, and I take them off the loom, and it’s this very dramatic thing. They’re hundreds of pounds, dangerous, and we’re all like ahh! Things go everywhere. Then I string a pole through the top and hang it, usually with the help of two or three people, and then see how the tension or lack of tension changes the forms. I re-approach [the work] and make more photographs, collages, and sketches. I’ve been sketching a lot of bark and trees that might not necessarily be seen in the pieces themselves, but it’s helpful for me to just think through where I want them to go—how landscapes speak through absence.



Jacqueline Surdell, Golden shroud (golden fleece), 2024





CGN: I read about your grandfather who worked in steel mills on the South Side of Chicago. Can you talk about your relationship with him and how that plays into your work?


JS: My dad is Catholic-Polish and grew up on the South Side of Chicago in a neighborhood called Hegewisch. Hegewisch has the highest Polish people per capita outside of Poland. It’s right on the border of Indiana. There’s no gas station there, because people just go to Indiana. I was raised Catholic, I’m confirmed in the church and all that. Church was the first place I ever experienced irreverence and where I asked why can’t a woman be a priest? The amazing pagan-ness of Catholicism. It’s gaudy and so over the top. A lot of the teachings end up being like, you just work really hard and respect your boss, and God will take care of you if you’re a disciplined person. That was part of how I grew up, and that’s part of my work. 


My jaja [Polish side of the family] was in Korea and then came back and worked in the steel mills. He fell once from a scaffolding, and he shattered one of his legs. He had these steel pins, this crazy contraption, a steel pole on the outside of his leg and then rods that came from the pole into his bones, so they could reset it. I remember thinking as a child, ‘Oh that’s the steel that you made. Steel broke you, so steel will fix you.’ He thought that was really funny. He was very smart even though he didn’t graduate high school. He was very aware of that and embarrassed almost, like he felt couldn’t contribute to my adult life. Catholicism was my connection with him. I remember our last conversation was this massive fight. And then he passed away in 2016. It was so sad.


[Then] when my busha [Polish side of the family] passed away in 2022, I had built up a resistance to Catholicism and religion in my life. When [both grandparents] were gone, I was like what is my identity? Do I actually not believe in this? What does it mean to have a belief that’s just against someone else’s? That’s why I made this piece, I’ve been calling it Suddenly, it’s that monumental piece I was talking about. 



Jacqueline Surdell in the studio. 2025. Photo by Dayson Emanuel Roa.



CGN: Do you feel like your work has changed since then?


JS: I think the way I’m approaching things is very different, but I don’t know if the physical work has changed. The physical work really changed during the pandemic. I really thought we were all going to die. That was my other moment where I was like, fuck it, I’m just gonna do this. I’m gonna make art full time. This is the only thing that makes sense to me. This is what I can contribute. 


For a long time, I felt like it was very selfish to be an artist and to work all day in your studio and be alone–I’ve been rethinking that approach as well, what it means to be a community member. But being a little more honest has opened up spaces for friends of mine or family to say, [for example,] “You doing what you want is very inspiring to me. It makes me feel like I didn’t have to stay in law school. I could be a therapist [or anything else] if I wanted to be.” I was so honored and surprised by that. I do think there’s something to be said about honoring your truth, knowing where you fit, and being okay with that. Be okay with how it’s never going to be perfect.


#


Jacqueline Surdell will be exhibiting with Secrist | beach at the Armory Show at booth 216 at The Javits Center, New York | September 4–7, 2025. 


On view in Chicago at Secrist | Beach:

JACQUELINE SURDELL | THE CONVERSION: RINGS, RUPTURE, 

AND THE FOREST ARCHIVE, September 19–November 15, 2025


The artist is also co-curating a concurrent group show at secrist | Beach, Natura Non Constristatur


View More information and works at jacquelinesurdell.com • Instagram @jacquelinesurdell

and secristbeach.com

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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.





Nikko Washington – 

Artist


“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.”


Nikko Washington


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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.




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.


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.



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.



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. 


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. 



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.


andicrist.com



Andi Crist, Extension Cords, Glazed stoneware, chrome, Sizes vary 2021-present. Photo: Mikey Mosher



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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. 




Debra Kerr – 

CEO, Intuit Art Museum


“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.”


Intuit Art Museum

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