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\r\n\r\n\r\n","body":"By GINNY VAN ALYEA
\r\n\r\nEntering the expansive Golden Triangle on a sunny fall morning, I was struck not only by the abundance of exotic antiques from far-flung reaches of the globe but also by a pair of contemporary, large–scale paintings flanking the showroom entrance. The patinaed antiques were typical examples of the historic objects the Golden Triangle is known for sourcing from around the world, but they were enhanced by the relatable juxtaposition of old and new art. I was curious to learn more about the paintings as well as how so many of them, as I would soon see, came to be in this unique space. The long story of decades of technical experiments and evolving philosophies would come from the very talkative artist Adam Siegel, and Doug Van Tress, co-owner of the Golden Triangle. Following is a transcript of our interview from October 2017. –GV
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CGN/Ginny: So how did this partnership come to be? Adam, I see so many of your new works installed throughout the Golden Triangle. There must be 30.
\r\n\r\nAdam Siegel: Doug Van Tress and I have been kind of watching each other – culturally – from a distance for a while. When I started working with my publicist, Jill Maremont, who is the founder of the River North Design District, she launched this idea of embedding artists into the design district with an annual Gallery Walk event. She suggested a partnership for me with Doug and The Golden Triangle and said that I should first bring a few paintings over to show Doug. And I’m like, ‘That sounds incredible.’
\r\n\r\nI don’t do anything in a small way, and I’ve never really had to work in an environment where someone told me I couldn’t do something. When someone gives me an opportunity I just go at it, 100%. I showed up at Doug’s in 2016 with a semi-truck, initially with 26 paintings, I was supposed to have six, and they were just supposed to be kind of leaning, for instance, in the foyer. It was all going to be smaller and no one was going to have to move anything. That is what they anticipated.
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CGN: But you thought, ‘I know Doug has this huge space with all these rooms.’
\r\n\r\nAdam: Right! And he has no clue that I’m just thinking, ‘This is amazing.’
\r\n\r\nDoug Van Tress: Adam came with some very big paintings.
\r\n\r\nAdam: But Doug just said, ‘I like it.’ And I told them there were a lot more. Next, Chauwarin Tuntisak, Doug’s partner here [at Golden Triangle], says, ‘Okay, bring another.’ Finally, after five works, he just said, ‘Okay Adam, just empty the truck. I’m not going to look. I’m going to walk away and just do it.’ So, for our first show I ended up bringing another four or five paintings in, and it was kind of by the seat of our pants. That night we almost sold out the show.
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CGN: So, now you’re into your second year of partnership.
\r\n\r\nAdam: Yes, this show ends in March 2018. When we started this exhibition, just knowing that I was going to show here again allowed me to start developing the Wabi Sabi Series, which is a series that takes an enormous amount of time to put together and develop. They’re designed to look like they just kind of floated together somehow, but the background that nobody will ever know is that I spent years in my studio investigating materials and technologies to marry this kind of historical and modern sensibility. This happens to be one of the elements that makes this work so compelling in setting for me. You can walk in and see a 200 year-old mask, or a 18th century European lamp, and then my contemporary paintings; it’s the classical and contemporary fused together and, ironically, that’s what’s happening in my studio.
\r\n\r\nThis partnership has afforded me this ambitious vision to come in here and take control. Once again, I came in and Doug and Chauwarin said, ‘Okay, Adam, let it happen.’
\r\n\r\nDoug: We definitely don’t just lie on our backs here. We seek things out for the space. We travel the world seeking beauty and see a lot of amazing art but we just really relate to Adam’s work.
\r\n\r\nAdam: There’s a conversation. I sat down with them and I said, “You know, I think what makes this potentially compelling to the world is that we’re so used to having these platforms for what a gallery showing is. You walk in, you look at the four walls, you see the paintings, you get a reading of that, and that’s your experience. We tend to associate the art now with that measure of experience. That’s the archetype of how we see art in the city.
\r\n\r\nDoug: And there may be a statement from the artist or gallerist, who tries to fluff up what you’re looking at.
\r\n\r\nAdam: Right, which usually takes longer than looking at the art.
\r\n\r\nDoug: Don’t get the wrong idea, but it’s lame.
\r\n\r\nAdam: You go to museums and people are just reading everything. I grew up in Chicago when the Museum of Contemporary Art was first a very adventurous institution. One of their original shows was called the Paper Show, you’d walk into the institution and everybody wore paper slippers, there were glass hallways, you’d walk above things, things were made out of paper. This city and its perspective of art is very organic, and my feeling was that to bring my paintings in context to a space like this, they have to have sympathetic motifs and origins in terms of using this very contemporary perspective. The understanding is historical, but there’s more relevancy for work that can actually walk both lines at the same time.
\r\n\r\nDoug: We do have a description posted of the Wabi Sabi series that Adam has produced, so we have word power here too, but mainly the space is the catalogue - you’re walking through it.
\r\n\r\nAdam: Right, it’s an experience.
\r\n\r\nDoug: Each room was transformed by a painting.
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CGN: Most showrooms don’t have individual rooms. Here, it’s a very real setting that mimics the home.
\r\n\r\nAdam: I’ve installed many works in private homes, and what I’ve tried to cultivate is this experience of watching rooms being transformed. Typically, clients will say, ‘I like these 4 or 5 paintings. Often, I’ll bring a couple of assistants into their home and we end up hanging 4 or 5 paintings in 10 different locations throughout the house. Coming into the Golden Triangle, I thought, it was like a museum, where each room offers up opportunities for different contextual spaces.
\r\n\r\nDoug: From our point of view, we love what it does to the rooms. Love it. Now, Adam doesn’t know this, but we’ve been buying contemporary paintings for a long time, but not a lot. I started actively buying oil paintings, mostly very old ones, in 2009. While in France at a show, I saw some stuff that I really liked, mostly from a color point-of-view – very old, blistered, ancient paintings – and I paired them with antiques, and they look great. We had just been playing with art a little bit, but not ever full out. We were not scared to mix some paintings in, but we had no clue that the space would be so transformed by Adam’s work.
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CGN: I see a consistency in the rooms; you can see how the antique and the contemporary fit together as well as change each room.
\r\n\r\nDoug: Customers love it, including designers, but also average buyers – people who probably have some comfort level buying things on their own but when they see it rigged up like this, it makes it even better. So, we were a little bit prepared for the success, but not for this. Adam’s work is very persuasive.
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CGN: Well, from the antiques side of things you’ve been in the business for a long time - close to 30 years. You have to evolve.
\r\n\r\nDoug: If you don’t evolve you end up in the fossil section of the museum.
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CGN: I would say that’s part of bringing antiques and their relevance and livability into reality today. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing, just antiques or just contemporary.
\r\n\r\nDoug: This is selfish on my side. I love Adam’s work. I just like it, personally, but when his pieces are next to all my antiques I don’t have to explain that my antiques are relevant to modern life. All they need to do is just walk through. They absorb that message with no words, and that’s what art is. I’m very suspicious of art that needs a lot of words, because that’s literature. If I want literature, I’ll buy a novel. I like art that speaks for itself. Adam’s pieces are very powerful, they speak directly, and they go with our lives.
\r\n\r\nAdam: In Europe the idea of embedding fine art in high-end retail has been going on for a while –artists know that you can have a showing in a historical place that’s an accepted template. In Paris you can go to some really elite boutiques and there are contemporary artists who are showing work there. That’s something that Europe has picked up on but America is a little bit slower to do thus so far. It’s basically this idea of relevancy, of different mediums talking to each other, for instance fashion and art. This is now what you are seeing at The Golden Triangle.
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CGN: People have to be inspired to go see things in person. You need to come up with new ways to do that, and that may mean putting people physically together in a new space, so that they are not alone with a virtual image. You can’t understand the three-dimensional aspect of a setting and the spatial relationship through a screen.
\r\n\r\nAdam: This is the antithesis of seeing something on your phone. You hit it on the nose. This show is an aggressive invitation to be able to go back and actually see paintings in ways that people used to see in the 16th century, when you’d walk through a church and see a Giotto, and stained glass, and all in the context of an amazing cathedral.
\r\n\r\nToday, you’d see a hundred people around you, just scrolling away on a screen, or aiming to take the right Instagram photo. How can you really connect with that? People need to be allowed to sit with art and understand its context.
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CGN: It’s different to be in a place.
\r\n\r\nAdam: Things look different at home than in a gallery setting. I tell people, “[This painting] is different in the summer and in the fall. It’s different in the morning, afternoon, and evening. It’s different when there’s humidity out, there are clouds out.’ Paintings that have layers, they’re like living beings. You take something home and all of the sudden it’s a real work of art. It starts creating an environment.
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CGN: Tell me what inspired the Wabi-Sabi paintings here.
\r\n\r\nAdam: For Wabi-Sabi, when I went to Oberlin College, I ended up in a seminary library one evening. I liked this community of people, and they were all going away to Japan the next year. So, I said to myself, ‘That sounds exciting,’ I ended up doing a 6-week Japanese intensive course, and next thing I know, I’m living in Japan for about a year studying at the Waseda University in Tokyo. I became friends with a photography dealer who had a home in Kyoto, and his spouse’s family owned the land that Ryoan-ji temple, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was built on. I became very familiar with what is called exquisite, aesthetic landscapes, and I had the opportunity to rake the Zen garden, which, is one of my life’s greatest honors. I bring it up because for me this piece embodies what it is to be in a Zen temple. The Wabi-sabi philosophical aesthetic is this idea of finding deep resonance and feeling embodied within humble materials. In some ways this work symbolizes the tension that’s in the [Golden Triangle], which is a mixture of both antique and modern. Certain works end up mimicking what’s happening in the rest of this store - contemporary and historical pushed together. Here, in Atlas, you see this whole experience and then all of the sudden your mind starts fighting to acquiesce, what is this grid, how does it all fit together? There is restraint and reverence, here I’m challenging the archetype of the dog.
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CGN: This painting in the [Golden Triangle] entryway is of a dog’s head.
\r\n\r\nAdam: We look at dogs and we’re very familiar with them, but there’s like 25 billion dog paintings out there; it’s like Rembrandt painting an old lady. At the point when he did that, everybody had painted portraits, but it wasn’t relevant that he had painted portraits. What was relevant was his vision of a how people could be seen through the medium of paint. Rembrandt took the most common elements and elevated them. For me, I liked the idea of being able to take this shepherd type dog and have this rugged projection of something menacing and also in opposition a very warm, organic, earthy. To live with an image like this would, I think, give the viewer the opportunity to re-evaluate their relationship to these beings.
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CGN: But you said this series is also meditative.
\r\n\r\nAdam: Yes. One of my series is called the Tantra series. It’s an opportunity for me to eliminate subject matter in order to focus on color exclusively. Here, color is a metaphor in some ways for a change in the temperature of your blood. When we are in environments, color literally changes our system and we secrete different chemicals in our brain – that’s why we look at sunsets and all these cascading chemicals are pumped out of our different organs. The Tantra series is an opportunity for me to think about the body and color as a metaphor of being in an emotional space.
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CGN: You started to talk about technology and Wabi-Sabi. How did the series come to be? Can you explain more about technology aspect?
\r\n\r\nAdam: On a trip to an old girlfriend’s country house in Wisconsin years ago I brought a stack of letters purchased from an antiques store written in Germany in the 1920’s. I get to this atrium in the house and open a letter up and it was written in Yiddish, which is a mostly dead, written language. I looked at it and out of nowhere I took a white candle, I drew a ¾ profile of a woman’s face along the quadrant of the axis of the fold. Working blue watercolor over the wax drawing, a face emerged. That launched a 15-year run of works on paper called Works on Words, where I was interacting with antique manuscripts. That work hit a chord among a wide audience and the collecting community. While showing one year with the Thomas McCormick Gallery at Art Chicago we sold over 25 of these works. It was crazy I was running back to the studio at night making and framing these pieces and delivering them all in the morning in order to keep pace with the demand. After 15 years of developing these small collages, I eventually developed them larger in scale. Later on in the development of these works I began incorporating collage elements such as natural history - butterflies, birds, flowers, dogs, lions, tigers, and bears.
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CGN: Was that a departure point for you, working with older materials?
\r\n\r\nAdam: I had never worked in collage before until I opened up those letters. I was working directly on paper, but never with pre-existing documents. What I was compelled by was this idea of not knowing what the language said and having the responsibility of how my images might be interpreted down the line.
\r\n\r\nAt first the work was smaller in scale, and I began to think I could be more persuasive if I could make it larger. It took me 15 years to figure out how to do that. When I talk about technology, ultimately it was 15 years of me trying to figure out how to take something small and make it large and have it be infused with the same level of humility and humanity. Many people said, ‘Adam, you’ve got to give up,’ and I just hit roadblock after roadblock.
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CGN: But you figured it out.
\r\n\r\nAdam: When I finally figured it out, it was a turning point. I realized I had everything I needed to make a grand, big piece, and I created this image of a boar’s head. I said to my wife, ‘Honey, I think I have something for our dining room,’ and she’s like, ‘Wow, that’s kind of intense. I love it, sure.’ But at that point I have art consultants coming through my studio, curators, some designers, and then all of the sudden, within a week, I had three people mention a new restaurant, Roister, and say I should show it to co-owner Nick Kokonas, whom I happened to know already. It’s a long story, but the piece (Boar’s Head) made it to the restaurant, where it still is.
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CGN: I hear you like to tinker with works even after they’re supposedly finished.
\r\n\r\nAdam: Yes, sometimes I like to go back in; often I am looking at a painting in my studio years later that I feel needs further development.
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CGN: You mentioned that Boar’s Head is at Roister. There is another boar’s head painting here at Golden Triangle.
\r\n\r\nAdam: Yes, this painting has the same motif but is a very different painting. This particular work (Boar’s Head II) speaks about challenging archetypes.
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CGN: I see it’s done on panels. What was your creative process?
\r\n\r\nAdam: It’s done on panels separately – there’s paper, charcoal and wax, ink and acrylic paint. So, for instance, I like layering different types of experiences within my work. These large gestures at the top of the painting are actually taken from my studio floor. When I’m painting, and paint is falling down and I’m slipping on it, they’ll then dry and I peel each one off like plastic. I actually bring the collage back into a work that’s so painterly.
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CGN: Tell me about the historical references here.
\r\n\r\nAdam: People look at Chicago as a food city more than ever, right? We’ve gone from looking at a plate of food as something we eat to looking at it in terms of high examples of what a plate of food is in terms of a narrative. And for me, what I love is this idea of a story, of taking the idea of food as a motif. Take the tradition of looking at food to paint a still life – you have a basket with a cornucopia, with the fruit and the rabbits spilling out. This [lobster painting] is kind of a play on that, but it’s taking it in a kind of mad direction where the paint is spilling out, and the idea is there’s a reference between the idea of cooking and painting and abundance. It speaks to the historical process of creating a meal as well as creating a painting. It is a feast for the eyes, really. Imagine sauces washing all over the place – oil from cooking and from painting.
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CGN: How closely related do you think art and food are to each other?
\r\n\r\nAdam: These works, they’re made sequentially, and what’s unique about collage is what’s important about cooking too. In cooking you can’t go backwards. You add something, and you taste it until it’s right. Or you start over. When you make the meal again you hope to have an understanding of what something will taste like based on how you understand your materials or ingredients. Just like tasting too much salt, too much vinegar, too much fat, too much sweet – collage has been a teaching mechanism for me to see that I know a piece is getting better.
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CGN: Where do you think your work is now, after several evolutions over the years, in scale, subject matter and technique?
\r\n\r\nAdam: This body of work is developing. Some of these paintings feel very relevant to me, because you’re never going to tire of them. I want painting to be reduced to its most essential core where it’s very personal and essential. Like being in the Zen rock garden, I’m trying to take humble materials and allow these very subtle things to ultimately have a voice and cultivate a metaphor for what it’s like to be alive. We can all be sad, angry and vulnerable, as well as inspired, transparent and resilient.
\r\n\r\nSo, this series really hits people. It’s like a meditation on what’s essential in life.
\r\n\r\n![\"\"](\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/2565/original/kimonoii.jpg\")
CGN: Looking at this work (Kimono) everything is being turned on its head and moving downward. The butterflies aren’t flying up, they’re tumbling down. All together it's sinister, despite the individual elements of white paint, flowers and butterflies.
\r\n\r\nAdam: Right, exactly. We’ve inherited an evolutionary perspective, predisposing us to associate color with butterflies and flowers, so I took that archetype and inverted it. There is a literal gravity to it too. It’s not random to use gravity to describe darkness. My dad died when I was 19. I helped him through six months of cancer. Watching your dad die is horrible. There’s also some power that comes with that too. You realize that you have this inheritance. I had been given this gift to know that death is certain, and it kind of amps one’s appreciation of life. This painting is very much a reflection on this balance of what we hold in our lives simultaneously. For me it is an ideal, celebratory perspective. At the same time the bouquet of flowers are a lament, or a death march. I think if we hold these two perspectives, one of celebrating our own humanity and in opposition, our mortality, it can increase our appreciation for the gift of being alive.
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CGN: You’re flipping the natural orientation as well as the colors.
\r\n\r\nAdam: Exactly, so here I’m taking two things that we’re wired to perceive and changing it up. Even if you’re 90, and you’ve had four drinks and you’re three sheets to the wind, you’re not looking at a rendered image. This says, ‘He’s still fucking with me.’ Here it’s dealing with luminance. Light into dark. As a painter to be able to walk both those lines is really powerful. I’m trying to draw people into a space where they are experiencing metaphors of our own environment and challenging the rudimentary nature of those archetypes.
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• Adam Siegel’s work is on view at The Golden Triangle at 330 N Clark St. through March 31, 2018.
\r\n\r\n• Siegel’s work is part of the 88th Artist Member Exhibition at the Arts Club of Chicago, January 19-February 24, 2018.
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Top image: Boar's Head II
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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.”