The Taxman Cometh
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The Contemporary Art Workshop was founded in 1949 by Kearney’s husband, sculptor John Kearney, a World War II vet who’d gone from the Pacific front to the Cranbrook Academy. His cofounders were painter Leon Golub, sculptors Cosmo Campoli and Ray Fink, and ceramist Al Kwitz. Lynn entered the scene a few months after they’d opened, as a Northwestern University art history graduate looking for instruction in silversmithing. John Kearney was her teacher. They were married in ’51 after two dates, and Lynn gave up her own artistic endeavors to raise their two children and manage the workshop. “When we started, almost no one was showing Chicago artists,” she says. “Artists would come here for a wonderful education and leave afterward because their work wouldn’t be seen.” CAW’s first space was in Cyrus McCormick’s abandoned carriage house, just off Michigan Avenue between Superior and Chicago. When that building was slated for teardown seven years later, the workshop moved to a space behind the Wrigley Building, and when that one was also demolished, they left for this building, which the Kearneys and Campoli (the other founders had moved on) purchased for about $29,000. CAW leases the building from them and pays all expenses, including taxes. The organization’s budget this year is $86,000; like most nonprofits, it’s feeling the pinch in donations and grants.
Up until five years ago CAW offered classes, but with only John left of the original partners (Cosmo, like “so many” of the people around at the beginning, is dead now) and Lynn running the space with just one part-time assistant and an intern, they stick to renting studios and mounting shows. Studio rents range from $120 to about $300, including utilities. “Artists don’t have to take a lease here,” Kearney says. “They can’t make that kind of commitment. Some have been here as long as ten years, but many are right out of art school.” Kearney says several thousand have worked or had shows at CAW, some going on to major careers–among them June Leif, Ellen Lanyon, Seymour Rosofsky, Jin Soo Kim, Jim Lutes, and Didier Nolet.
