Current CSA Program

please note: our 2013 edition will be announced soon. and we have a new website dedicated to the CSA program, it's here.

 

For our winter 2012 edition, we offered a special edition featuring artist-designed place-settings.  For $400, a share includes a full setting, all hand-made by Chicago contemporary art luminaries; a unique placemat by Karolina Gnatowski, bowl by John Preus, plate by Christine Tarkowski, and cup by Mindy Rose Schwartz

Shares are still available for purchase here
 

HOW IT WORKS:

Community-Supported Art Chicago is a twice-yearly art subscription service of locally produced art. Borrowing the model of Community-Supported Agriculture, where consumers invest in a local farm and get a monthly payout of fruits and vegetables, threewalls is asking people to invest directly in the arts community with that same mentality and get limited edition contemporary artist projects in return. CSA Chicago makes collecting contemporary art affordable and accessible.

As a special holiday edition, we're excited to offer works directly made for shareholders' dining tables. Artists were chosen based on their approach to materials and conceptual imaginations, and we asked them to stretch their artistic practices to produce functional objects. They were given free reign to make their editions, in whatever style or make they desired, the only constraint in this case being that the object must be usable. Our CSA artists have extensive exhibition histories that are local, national and international, including documenta 13, Musuem of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Monique Meloche Gallery, the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis and many more. Our previous sold-out editions are now included as part of the Hull House Art lending library, as well as the personal collections of Chicago artists, museums curators, and foundations. 

More information on the program and past editions here

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:

KAROLINA GNATOWSKI

Karolina Gnatowski received her BFA from The University of the Arts, Philadelphia in 2002 and her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007, where she is now a faculty member and Graduate Student Coordinator for the Fiber and Materials Studies Department. Now residing in Chicago, Gnatowski is originally from Wolomin, Poland. Recent solo exhibitions include 2012 “You Have To Believe We Are Magic” at Lula Cafe, Chicago: "PPPPPresto!," On The Wall at Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago: "Tie Dyes On The Sunrise," curated by Nancy Lu Rosenheim at the Bike Room, Chicago. Group exhibitions include “Where My Cones At” curated by Ryan Travis Christian traveling to San Diego and L.A.: Bauhaus Nowat the Ukrainian institute of Modern Art, Chicago; R & D, curated by Britton Bertran, at Manifold Gallery, Chicago, and In Circles at SideCar Gallery, Hammond, IN. Upcoming in 2012 her work will be included in Stranger Danger at Hinge Gallery, Chicago and More Than Naked, curated by Christian Rieben at Loyola University, Chicago. To lean more visit http://karolinagnatowski.com/

Placemats: Gnatowski's Hand knit then hand woven placemats require the diner to engage with the work by  placing the heavy plaster hands on their thighs while they eat or sliding their body between the dangling arms and entering the piece. Either way the user must negotiate their body around this textile to activate it. Dinner has never been so physically challenging.

JOHN PREUS

The son of Norwegian Lutheran pastors going back 6 generations, John Preus (b. 1971) spent his early years running barefoot in Makumira, Tanzania, then grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and northern Wisconsin.  Preus, in spite of his squandered pastoral pedigree, currently works as an artist, builder, fabricator, amateur writer, collaborator, and occasional curator. He founded Dilettante Studios in 2010 which designs and builds cabinets, furniture, and residential and commercial spaces, relying almost exclusively on 2nd-hand materials.  He co-founded the art group Material Exchange in 2005, and until 2010 collaborated with co-founder Sara Black.  Preus is currently co-curator with Laura Shaeffer at SHOP, Creative Director for the Rebuild Foundation shop, and lead fabricator for Theaster Gates studios.

Preus holds an MFA from the University of Chicago (2005). He has roughly 16 years of building and designing experience, which includes a 2-year apprenticeship with award-winning hand-tool master, John Nesset, and some years working in cabinet shops and on carpentry crews. Exhibitions of his work include the Huguenot House, Kassel, Germany during dOCUMENTA 13, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Portland Museum of Contemporary Craft, the Betty Rhymer Gallery, the Hyde Park Art Center, the Smart Museum of Art, the Devos Museum of Art in Marquette, Michigan.  Preus's work will be featured in a solo exhibition in gallery 1 at the Hyde Park Art Center in April of 2014.  Preus lives with his family in West Rogers Park on the north side of Chicago. To learn more visit johnpreus.com.

BOWLS: These bowls are modified or hybridized  mass production stoneware found at Chicago thrift stores. The bowls were refired at cone 6, to melt the glaze and fuse the pieces together or subtly alter the original shape.

MINDY ROSE SCHWARTZ

Mindy Rose Schwartz has shown her sculpture and installations throughout the United States with exhibitions in Houston, TX; Brooklyn, NY; St. Louis and Kansas City, MO; Miami, FL and Chicago. Recent exhibitions include a threewalls solo exhibition (2011) and group exhibitions at Western Exhibitions (2011) and Northeastern Illinois University Fine Arts Center (2012). Her work has been written about in artnet Magazine, Beautiful Decay (online), Time Out Chicago, The Chicago Tribune, Newcity, ArtForum, Frieze Magazine, Art in American and Whitewalls. She was the recipient of a 3Arts Fellowship to Ragdale in 2010 and a Frankel Foundation Full Fellowship Award to the Vermont Studio Center in 2005. Schwartz earned her MFA at the University of Illinois, Chicago. To learn more visit mindyroseschwartz.com.

CHRISTINE TARKOWSKI

Christine Tarkowski is a Chicago based artist who works in a variety of mediums including sculpture, printed matter, photography and song. Her works range in scale from the ordinary to the monumental. Equally variable is her scope of production which incorporates the making of permanent architectural structures, cast models, textile yardage, and temporary printed ephemera. Many of her recent works point toward the flotsam of western culture relative to systems of democracy, religion and capitalism. Those systems often malleable and intersect with or concern themes of conversion, salvation, and belief. Christine’s solo exhibitions include Whale Oil, Slave Ships & Burning Martyrs at Priska Juschka Fine Art in New York, Imitatio Dei at the Museum of Contemporary in Chicago and Last Things Will Be First And First Things Will Be Last at the Chicago Cultural Center. She has been included in exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Socrates Sculpture Park, Cooper-Hewitt National Museum of Design, RISD Museum, and The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu.  She has created commissioned projects for the Manilow Sculpture Park at Governor’s State University, Mass MoCA, Public Art/City of Chicago, and Franconia Sculpture Park. She currently is an Associate Professor in the Fiber and Material Studies Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has been the recipient of grants from the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, the Creative Capital Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council and awarded residencies at the Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris and J.M. Kohler Arts in Industry. To learn more visit http://christinetarkowski.com/

Plates: Uniquely different each time, the plates clear with layers of colored epoxy resin dripped/drawn on the back-side.