Saturday Fun Day Part II

Yesterday I attended the opening of the new modern art wing at The Chicago Art Institute with my great friend Chelsea Winkel. Chelsea is talented painter, designer, and all around swell chick. Check our her design stuff at www.hirechelsea.com, some of her paintings at www.chelseawinkel.com, and her blog at www.hirechlsea.com/blog. Anyways, the new wing is pretty key. Unfortunately, the mass of people that showed up for the opening made it tough to fully enjoy all of the great artwork. Some of the highlights were the Picassos, Lichtensteins, Matisses, and Dalis. There are of course some pretentious modern works such as a canvas painted completely orange or blank white ones with a few bolts and stuff attached to them. But all in all, it's a fairly respectable collection and a must see for anyone interested in the last 100 years of modern art. The building is beautiful and they have some great gigantic glass doors :). I'm looking forward to visiting the museum again when there's a smaller crowd.

Later in the evening we attended the Saturday night performance of The Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The performance featured conductor Osmo Vänskuä and violin soloist Nikolaj Znaider. Osmo was extremely animated and very entertaining to watch. Not only was Nikolaj an amazing violinist, but I found it fascinating that he had every one of his parts committed to memory. Wow is all I can say. It's great to get out the suit jacket every once in a while hit the town and absorb some culture.

All in all a great Saturday! Ok, I need to get to work now.

Design Vs. Art

Lately I have been getting out and seeing a lot of artwork at various galleries around Chicago. Today I attended some of the gallery open houses at Explore Fulton Market (www.explorefultonmarket.com). In the past couple weeks I have seen some great artwork and well, truthfully, some not so great artwork.

Years of producing commercial design had soured my drive to be truly creative outside the guidelines of the advertising world. Although necessary for practical means, the confines of commercial design doesn't offer a creative type the needed outlet and release of ideas and emotions that fine art provides.

With the help of all the great, and not so great, work I've seen in the past couple weeks, I have been feeling truly inspired to do some projects that aren't trying to sell someone something or convince them to jump on the latest cultural bandwagon. Seeing others that are active in the art community here in Chicago really gives me some drive to get up and do something. I have talent that I feel has basically been wasted for quite some time. I know that I have something to offer and I'm ready to start dishing it out! As a teenager I enjoyed creating art for the mere act of expressing myself and providing the viewer with something that's interesting to the human psyche. I feel that stepping back and just producing work for myself without any rules or guidelines will really help me in many aspects of my life.

I'm taking back my lifelong love of creating... So where did I put that drawing pencil?