Avast! It’s Artboat!
The going rate for a 10-by-12-foot booth at Art Chicago is $4,500. That’s a big bite for a young gallery, and as a result not many are represented at the annual expo, lust as they may for the buyers who attend it. For a while now the scruffy upstarts have staged their own events the same weekend as the big show, competing with each other to lure a few of the deep pockets from Navy Pier into other parts of the city to look at their wares. David Roman, who runs the three-year-old gallery Standard out of his apartment, says it wasn’t an optimal situation: “There were too many events; people couldn’t get to them all.” About 18 months ago Roman and Michael Workman, who publishes Bridge magazine from his own art space-cum-apartment, were brooding about the situation when inspiration struck. What’s the best way to ride the coattails of an event on a pier? On the water, stupid. Artboat was born.
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They couldn’t get it together in time for last year’s expo, but this year Workman and Roman have rented the Anita Dee II for a three-hour cruise Saturday, May 10, smack in the middle of Art Chicago weekend. The plan is to embark from Navy Pier at 2 PM, with representatives and art from 30 unconventional galleries, a bounty of artists, and about 300 guests; the ship carries a maximum of 450 people. Galleries will be charged $150 each to participate and allowed two staff members and three pieces of work aboard. They’ll be asked to submit proposals–preferably for site-specific installations–which a committee will review. Those showing traditional two-dimensional work (you know, paintings and drawings) will face a special challenge, since the boat doesn’t have much in the way of walls. Except for a couple of hallways, “the walls they do have are all windows,” Workman says. The gallerists were scheduled to walk through Anita Dee this week to get the lay of the land; on May 10 it’ll be a “guerrilla setup,” Workman says: they’ll have only two hours to install the work before they sail.
Smart Move
Right after we heard about Artboat another surprise sailed into view: for the first time, Art Chicago producer Thomas Blackman Associates has decided to remount its Stray Show–which showcases small, off-the-beaten-track galleries–the weekend of the pier show. The spring Stray Show will be held May 9-12 in the same warehouse space at 1418 N. Kingsbury that housed it when it was last up, in December. Art Chicago associate director Heather Hubbs says they made the decision in response to requests they’d received from the galleries. Hubbs says Blackman Associates is expecting 50 galleries to participate, and there’s likely to be some overlap with those on the boat, but it’s not an issue. She thinks the boat is a “cool” idea; Blackman will help publicize it. Hubbs declined to say how much galleries will be charged to participate in the Stray Show, but word on the street is that a price increase is in store.
