Bad at Sports

This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews visit the studio of artist Delano Dunn, whose dazzling collages combine the visual excess of the 1980s and '90s with the deeply uncomfortable histories embedded in American popular culture.

Dunn's work is seductive by design. Glitter, holographic surfaces, bright colors, vintage advertisements, and fragments of historical imagery draw viewers into compositions that quickly reveal something considerably darker. Racist caricatures, political figures, and the visual machinery of American consumer culture collide in works that ask us to confront histories we might prefer to forget.

The conversation begins with collage and moves into an expansive discussion of race, memory, representation, and the complicated business of making images. Dunn takes aim at contemporary portraiture, arguing that too many portraits strip their subjects of contradiction, complexity, and humanity. His alternative? Find the dirt. Historical figures are more interesting when we acknowledge the things that make them difficult, compromised, and recognizably human.

Along the way, the conversation wanders through Steely Dan, Larry Rivers, Ronald Reagan, comic books, moviegoing, art history, hockey, the Chicago Bears, and the peculiar ways that sports culture might teach the art world something about developing an audience.

The discussion also takes us to Dunn's exhibition *Echoes in the Margin* at Troutbeck in Amenia, New York. Curated by Mickalene Thomas and presented with the Wassaic Project, the exhibition brings together works addressing American history and race, including portraits of W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, and Ida B. Wells.

The location is particularly resonant: Troutbeck hosted important NAACP gatherings in 1916 and 1933. Dunn is interested not simply in celebrating historical figures but in recovering their contradictions, personalities, and humanity.

It's an episode about the pleasure of looking, the danger of forgetting, and why a little glitter can make some very difficult conversations possible.

Names Dropped:

Delano Dunn — https://www.delanodunn.com/

Duncan MacKenzie — https://badatsports.com/ (program website)

Brian Andrews — https://badatsports.com/ (program website; individual turns not audio-verified)

Arturo Herrera — https://smartcollection.uchicago.edu/objects/973/untitled

Michael Ray Charles — https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/items/detail/interview-michael-ray-charles-24827

Larry Rivers — https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_66.4295

Napoleon Bonaparte — https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_66.4295 (relevant artwork)

Jacques-Louis David — https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_66.4295 (relevant artwork)

Ronald Reagan — https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/ronald-reagan/

W. E. B. Du Bois — https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/naacp/founding-and-early-years.html

Langston Hughes — https://poets.org/poet/langston-hughes

Ida B. Wells — https://www.nps.gov/people/ida-b-wells.htm

Mickalene Thomas — https://www.wassaicproject.org/exhibitions/delano-dunn-echoes-in-the-margin

Eve Biddle — https://www.wassaicproject.org/ (organization only; exact role not independently verified)

Joel Spingarn — https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/naacp/founding-and-early-years.html

Clarence Thomas — https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/biographies.aspx

Harlan Crow — https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-luxury-trips-harlan-crow-supreme-court

Joel Chandler Harris — https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/joel-chandler-harris-1848-1908/

Vincent Price — https://www.bfi.org.uk/film/7f444b7b-d778-5559-8222-15f9b485ac11/theatre-of-blood

Diana Rigg — https://www.bfi.org.uk/film/7f444b7b-d778-5559-8222-15f9b485ac11/theatre-of-blood

Shane Gillis — https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live (general program page, not verification of the specific monologue)

Echoes in the Margin — https://www.wassaicproject.org/exhibitions/delano-dunn-echoes-in-the-margin

Troutbeck — https://troutbeck.com/

Wassaic Project — https://www.wassaicproject.org/

Montague Contemporary — https://www.montaguecontemporary.com/exhibitions/63-echoes-in-the-margin-delano-dunn/overview/

School of the Art Institute of Chicago — https://www.saic.edu/profiles/faculty/delano-dunn

NAACP — https://naacp.org/

Amenia Conference (1916) — https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/naacp/founding-and-early-years.html

Second Amenia Conference (1933) — https://loc.gov/exhibits/naacp/the-great-depression.html

Art Review – https://artreview.com/

Vanity Fair — https://www.vanityfair.com/

Affordable Art Fair — https://affordableartfair.com/

Art Institute of Chicago — https://www.artic.edu/

Bad at Sports — https://badatsports.com/

Guggenheim Fellowships — https://www.gf.org/

WEB DuBois (Delano Dunn) — https://www.wassaicproject.org/exhibitions/delano-dunn-echoes-in-the-margin

The Greatest Homosexual, after "Napoleon in his Study" by David (Larry Rivers, 1964) — https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_66.4295

The Second Greatest Homosexual (Larry Rivers, 1965) — https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6161153

Uncle Remus stories — https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/joel-chandler-harris-1848-1908/

Steely Dan — https://steelydanofficial.com/

Absolute Batman — https://www.dc.com/

X-Men / Uncanny X-Men — https://www.marvel.com/comics

The Sandman — https://www.dc.com/

Commando — https://www.imdb.com/find/?q=Commando%201985

The Breakfast Club — https://www.imdb.com/find/?q=The%20Breakfast%20Club%201985

Menace II Society — https://www.imdb.com/find/?q=Menace%20II%20Society

Theatre of Blood (1973) — https://www.bfi.org.uk/film/7f444b7b-d778-5559-8222-15f9b485ac11/theatre-of-blood (corrects 1972)

Saturday Night Live — https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live

Chicago Bears — https://www.chicagobears.com/

Chicago Cubs — https://www.mlb.com/cubs

Chicago White Sox — https://www.mlb.com/whitesox

Chicago Blackhawks — https://www.nhl.com/blackhawks

Los Angeles riots — https://www.history.com/topics/1990s/los-angeles-riots

What can a handful of dirt tell you about where you live? At ACRE Projects in Chicago, the Bad at Sports crew joins ceramic artist E. Saffronia Downing amid her exhibition Pressed Flower to talk about wild clay, the material memory of cities, and what happens when people are invited to mail you their dirt.

For Call for Clay, Downing issued open invitations in 2023 and 2025 for participants to send foraged clay, along with letters about where it came from. Published by the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, the resulting book brings together 40 contributors from 19 states and three countries. Part correspondence project, part material archive, it is a portrait of the places we carry around with us—even when they arrive in a Ziploc bag.

The conversation moves from Chicago's common bricks and a stream beneath Downing's family home in Baltimore to a mysterious flower-or-gear pressed into an upstate New York sidewalk. There are hand-pinched beads that are also seeds, ceramic tiles embedded in gallery walls, the environmental ethics of taking dirt from the ground, and the industrial operations hidden behind the humble bag of studio clay. Add some kiln-shelf anxiety, colored-pencil drawing on fired ceramics, and an inconclusive effort to determine whether everything is sculpture, and you have a pretty good afternoon at Bad at Sports.

Names Dropped:

E. Saffronia Downing – https://e-saffronia.net/

Ryan Peter Miller – https://ryanpetermiller.com/about

Duncan MacKenzie – https://badatsports.com/broadcast-staff/duncan-mackenzie/

Brian Andrews – https://www.brianandrews.org/

Katherine (Kitty) Ross – https://www.saic.edu/profiles/faculty/katherine-ross

Amber Ginsburg – https://www.amberginsburg.com/

Lisa Frank – https://lisafrank.com/

Pressed Flower – https://acreresidency.org/index.php/exhibition/pressed-flower

Call for Clay – https://i-n-g-a.com/products/call-for-clay-by-e-saffronia-downing

ACRE Projects – https://acreresidency.org/

School of the Art Institute of Chicago — Ceramics – https://www.saic.edu/ceramics

Bad Water Gallery (Field Dug Over listing) – https://locatearts.org/exhibitions/knoxville/field-dug-over

John Michael Kohler Arts Center – https://www.jmkac.org/

Bad at Sports / Bad at Sportscenter – https://badatsports.com/

Lumpen Radio (WLPN-LP) – https://lumpenradio.com/

Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago – https://mcachicago.org/

Wissahickon Valley Park – https://fow.org/

Mason Stains — Mason Color Works – https://www.masoncolor.com/mason-stains

Trapper Keeper — Mead – https://www.mead.com/trapper-keeper-details/

Google Maps – https://www.google.com/maps

Duncan MacKenzie and Jesse Malmed sit down with artist Tony Lewis and Bosco Bae, brother of the late Chicago artist Gregory Bae (1986–2021), for a moving, funny, and candid conversation recorded live at PATRON Gallery in Chicago.

The occasion is Let's Go Exploring!, a two-person exhibition bringing together work by longtime friends and studio mates Tony Lewis and Gregory Bae. But what begins as a conversation about an exhibition quickly becomes something more complicated: an exploration of friendship, loss, memory, artistic responsibility, and the strange business of keeping an artist's work alive after their death.

Tony and Bosco recount the collective efforts to preserve Gregory's work, from moving the contents of his studio and organizing the artist-led archival project CV to making curatorial decisions that Gregory himself might not have agreed with. What should survive? What gets exhibited? Who has the authority to decide? And how can an archive remain experimental, generous, and alive rather than becoming a monument to a fixed history?

The group considers the ethics of recreating artworks, a bonsai that might be both alive and doomed, Tony's enormous graphite basketball-court drawing, the politics of Asian American identity, and the sometimes extraordinary generosity of Chicago's artistic community.

The exhibition's title comes from the final Calvin and Hobbes comic strip.

Name Drops and links:

•

Tony Lewis – https://patrongallery.com/artist/tonylewis/cv

• Bosco Bae - https://boscobae.com/
•

Gregory Bae – https://patrongallery.com/artist/gregorybae

•

Josh Dihle – https://www.joshdihle.com/

•

Robert Chase Heishman – https://www.robertchaseheishman.com/

•

Mika Horibuchi – https://patrongallery.com/artist/mikahoribuchi

•

Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes) – https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes

•

PATRON Gallery – https://patrongallery.com/

•

Let's Go Exploring! – https://patrongallery.com/exhibitions

•

Chicago Works: Gregory Bae, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago – https://mcachicago.org/whats-on/events/talk-24-7-365-a-roundtable-on-the-life-and-work-of-gregory-bae/

•

Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago – https://mcachicago.org/

•

School of the Art Institute of Chicago – https://www.saic.edu/

•

This Thing We Call Art: Gregory Bae – https://www.thisthingwecallart.com/archive/gregory-bae

•

Two of a Kind: At Patron, Tony Lewis and Gregory Bae Explore How Friendship Impacts One's Artwork, Chicago Reader – https://patrongallery.com/press/item797/Two-of-a-kind-At-Patron-Tony-Lewis-and-Gregory-Bae-explore-how-friendship-impacts-ones-artwork

Brian Andrews, Duncan MacKenzie, and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with Chicago-area artist Paul Nudd at Spudnik Press, surrounded by the work of the 1st International Milwaukee Riso Invitational.

Nudd has spent more than two decades producing a gloriously strange universe of hairy organisms, mutant bodies, psychedelic biological forms, and wonderfully unsettling surfaces. His work moves between painting, drawing, printmaking, video, and, most recently, ceramics. But beneath all the slime, crust, and occasional bodily horror is an artist deeply committed to experimentation, collaboration, and the pleasures of making things.

The conversation begins with Nudd's long relationship with Chicago's printmaking community, including his legendary 2009 residency at Spudnik Press with cartoonist Onsmith, where the pair produced more than a thousand prints—and apparently sold none of them.

Nudd describes why he loves Riso's imperfect surfaces, the magic of working with master printers, his affection for Chicago Imagism, and the importance of preserving uncertainty in the studio. The hosts also investigate whether Nudd's work is actually gross or not.

The second half finds Nudd reflecting on the unexpected pleasures of ceramics, his work as an elementary school art teacher, creative attention, and the increasingly porous boundaries between his studio, garden, kitchen, compost heap, and classroom.

Recorded at Spudnik Press, Chicago, in conjunction with the closing of the 1st International Milwaukee Riso Invitational.

Name drops and links

Paul Nudd - https://westernexhibitions.com/artist/paul-nudd/

Onsmith - https://www.spudnikpress.org/people/onsmith/

Chris Flynn - https://cflynnprints.com/

Jim Nutt - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Nutt

Peter Saul - https://www.moma.org/artists/5178-peter-saul

Chloe Perkis - https://www.chloe-perkis.com/

Big Black - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Black

Spudnik Press - https://www.spudnikpress.org/

Western Exhibitions - https://westernexhibitions.com/

Hoofprint - https://www.hoofprintchicago.com/

Marz Community Brewing - https://www.marzbrewery.com/

What makes a painting worth saving? What happens when the image in your head refuses to become the image on your panel? And why does everybody want another fox?

This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie, Brian Andrews, and Ryan Peter Miller welcome Chicago painter Mari Eastman for a conversation recorded at Spudnik Press during its Riso Print Fest. Eastman takes us through the pleasures and frustrations of painting, from translating a beloved fox into a woodblock print to rescuing abandoned paintings with techniques borrowed from Bob Ross. They explore fashion photography, the Chicago figurative painting scene, the peculiar intimacy of appropriated images, and the elusive point where faithful representation can lose the feeling that made an image irresistible in the first place.

Name Drops:

•

Mari Eastman - bombonprojects.com

•

Ben Butler - https://www.benbutlerart.com/

•

Shannon Stratton - https://www.shannonraestratton.com/

•

Edvard Munch - nga.gov

•

Kerry James Marshall - nga.gov

•

Paul McCarthy - hauserwirth.com

•

Tyson Reeder - canadanewyork.com

•

Carl Baratta - https://carlbaratta.com/

•

Bob Ross - https://www.bobross.com/

•

Rebecca Morris - bortolamigallery.com

•

Richard Estes - nga.gov

•

Karen Kilimnik - metmuseum.org

•

Richard Prince - gagosian.com

•

Elizabeth Peyton - gagosian.com

•

Margaux Williamson - bradleyertaskiran.com

•

Leanne Shapton - https://www.leanneshapton.com/

•

School of the Art Institute of Chicago - https://www.saic.edu/

•

Spudnik Press - https://www.spudnikpress.org/

•

Process/Process - https://process-process.com/

•

Bombon Projects - https://www.bombonprojects.com/

What do you do when your hope for the future starts to feel fragile? And what can a painting, an act of remembrance, or a bottle of perfume do about it?

Duncan MacKenzie sits down with Haitian-born artist Manuel Mathieu at Calgary's Esker Foundation for a conversation that moves between studio practice and the world beyond it. They begin with Mathieu's presentation at the 2026 Venice Biennale, including GENOCIDE and his mosaic Abundance and Drought, then explore archives, erasure, political power, the responsibilities of artists, and whether art can make room for disagreement without closing down empathy.

Mathieu talks through the evolution of his paintings, from highly controlled marks to surfaces that scrape, drip, burn, and resist their original plans. He argues that figuration is not abstraction's opposite so much as one of its tools. He and Duncan work through the possibilities of beauty, Haitian Vodou, spirituality, the legacy of Toussaint Louverture, and the difference between changing the world and changing the lives of the people near you.

Name Drops and links

•

Manuel Mathieu - https://www.manuelmathieu.com/

•

Clyfford Still - https://clyffordstillmuseum.org/

•

Kara Walker - https://www.karawalkerstudio.com/

•

Kent Monkman - https://www.kentmonkman.com/

•

Titus Kaphar - https://www.kapharstudio.com/

•

Willem de Kooning - https://www.dekooning.org/

•

Christian Boltanski - https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/ressources/personne/z88xAxH

•

Francis Bacon - https://www.francis-bacon.com/

•

Toussaint Louverture - https://www.cheminsdememoire.gouv.fr/fr/chateau-de-jouxhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toussaint_Louverture

•

Audre Lorde - https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/308596/the-masters-tools-will-never-dismantle-the-masters-house-by-lorde-audre/9780241339732https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audre_Lorde

•

bell hooks - https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Will-to-Change/bell-hooks/9780743456081https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_hooks

•

Esker Foundation - https://eskerfoundation.com/

•

Pilar Corrias - https://www.pilarcorrias.com/

•

Manuel Mathieu Parfums - https://manuelmathieuparfums.com/en

Artist and magician Jeanette Andrews joins Duncan and Jesse at the Elmhurst Art Museum, the very place where, as a teenager, she began imagining how magic could become contemporary art. Nearly twenty years later, that ambition has become an exhibition. The conversation travels from Victorian parlor magic and vaudeville to the psychology of surprise, Alan Turing, and Andrews's Taken by Artificial Surprise, which asks audiences to distinguish between human-created magic and illusions developed with machine learning. Along the way: why knowing how a trick works can ruin the experience, whether magic is really for adults, and a research process involving enough handwritten notes to make an apartment resemble a conspiracy theorist's headquarters.

****Update: The HCL Benefit is November 10th, 2026

Photo: Michael George

Name Drop List:

Duncan MacKenzie - https://kurasmackenzie.com

Jesse Malmed - https://uwm.edu/arts/directory/malmed-jesse/

Jeanette Andrews - https://jeanetteandrewsstudio.com

Bad at Sports - https://badatsports.com

Lumpen Radio - https://lumpenradio.com

Elmhurst Art Museum - https://elmhurstartmuseum.org

McCormick House - https://elmhurstartmuseum.org/architecture

Criss Angel - https://crissangel.com

John Cottingham - https://johncottingham.co.uk

Western Philosophy: An Anthology - https://johncottingham.co.uk/Western-Philosophy/

Max Maven - https://maxmaven.com

The Office - https://peacocktv.com/stream-tv/the-office

Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin - https://encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/theater-biographies/jean-eugene-robert-houdin

Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago - https://mcachicago.org

Invisible Roses - https://mcachicago.org/stories/editorial/invisible-roses/

Anton Chekhov - https://britannica.com/biography/Anton-Chekhov

Tom Griffiths - https://psych.princeton.edu/people/tom-griffiths

Revealing ontological commitments by magic - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25490128/

High Concept Labs - https://highconceptlabs.org

Harvard metaLAB - https://metalab.harvard.edu

Alan Turing - https://britannica.com/biography/Alan-Turing

Computing Machinery and Intelligence - https://academic.oup.com/mind/article/LIX/236/433/986238

Taken by Artificial Surprise - https://jeanetteandrewsstudio.com/taken-by-artificial-surprise

Chicago Symphony Orchestra - https://cso.org

In Plain Listen - https://jeanetteandrewsstudio.com/in-plain-listen-nac

University of Houston - https://uh.edu

MIT — Jeanette Andrews visiting-artist profile - https://arts.mit.edu/people/jeanette-andrews/

On Wonder, Mind, & Magic: Jeanette Andrews - https://elmhurstartmuseum.org/exhibitions/on%20wonder%20mind%20and%20magic

High Concept Labs 2026 Benefit - https://highconceptlabs.org/events/2026-benefit

What can eight small paintings tell us about the possibilities of an artist-run space? Duncan MacKenzie, joined midway by Jesse Malmed, speaks with Jean Alexander Frater, Matthew Girson, and Dana DeGiulio about a two-person exhibition at Material, Jean's artist-run project space in Chicago's Roscoe Village. Four paintings by Matthew and four by Dana are installed in an alternating sequence, setting up a conversation across the walls rather than dividing the gallery by artist.

Their discussion begins with the particular staying power of artist-run Chicago: Dana's work establishing Julius Caesar in 2008, Matthew's earlier project presenting artworks from the cab of a pickup truck, and Jean's decade of making room for other artists at Material. From there, the conversation turns to the peculiar ambitions of intimate paintings, each made within a day. Is choosing a familiar genre conservative? What happens when a painting leaves the studio and enters the social space of an exhibition? And what can an actual encounter with an object offer that a circulating image cannot?

The group follows those questions through care, constraint, repetition, touch, and hospitality—with Maggie Nelson, Agnes Martin, Nina Simone, and the art market making appearances along the way. If a painting cannot tell its viewer what to feel, perhaps it can begin a sentence someone else is free to finish.

Names Dropped:

Duncan MacKenzie - https://kurasmackenzie.com/

Jesse Malmed - https://www.jessemalmed.net/

Jean Alexander Frater - https://alexanderfrater.com/home.html

Matthew Girson - https://www.matthewgirson.com/

Dana DeGiulio - https://www.danadegiulio.com/

Agnes Martin - https://www.diaart.org/collection/artist-a-to-z/martin-agnes

Jackson Pollock - https://www.pkhouse.org/

Maggie Nelson - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/maggie-nelson

Martin Luther King Jr. - https://thekingcenter.org/about-tkc/martin-luther-king-jr/

Nina Simone - https://www.ninasimone.com/biography/

Nick Cave (musician) - https://www.nickcave.com/

Bad at Sports - https://badatsports.com/

Material - https://thevisualist.org/?p=194120

Julius Caesar - https://www.juliuscaesarchicago.net/about-jc

Lumpen Radio - https://lumpenradio.com/

Christie's - https://www.christies.com/

Rothko Chapel - https://rothkochapel.org/

Palace of Versailles - https://en.chateauversailles.fr/

Google - https://blog.google/

Steinway & Sons - https://www.steinway.com/

Paintings that have the look of paintings that are looked at - https://thevisualist.org/?p=194120

On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint - https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/freedom-0

Art Song (section of On Freedom) - https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/freedom-0

Number 7A, 1948 (Jackson Pollock) - https://www.christies.com/en/stories/jackson-pollock-number7a-1948-john-elderfield-44b8c76206ad4793a8dccc3c899ea86f

Christie's May 18, 2026 evening auctions - https://press.christies.com/christies-commences-spring-marquee-week-with-11-billion-in-sales-in-a-single-night/

Project Suncatcher - https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/research/google-project-suncatcher/

At Spudnik Press in Chicago, Duncan MacKenzie, Brian Andrews and Ryan Peter Miller welcome Mark Jeffery, Judd Morrissey and Kristin Mariani to discuss the Poor Farm Experiment's Leopold Benches: A P(o)or(t)ch Theater (MIDWEST REDUX).

Developed through the U.S. Pavilion's PORCH program at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale and presented in Chicago at the MCA's Chicago Performs festival, the work turns a porch into a place of observation, invitation, performance and collective play.

The conversation moves through Aldo Leopold's benches, stereoscopic photographs and binocular rivalry, Mariani's language-bearing Text Toiles, the choreography of "queer sitting," and the Deeply Choir's role in animating the museum plaza.

It also opens onto the project's wider artistic ecology: Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam's Poor Farm in Wisconsin; Mark Jeffery and Kelly Kaczynski's residency practice; the nido residency in Umbria; and an approach to collaboration in which living together, hosting, making and friendship become inseparable.

PERFORMANCE:

9/25/2026 - 3pm at the MCA! (Dolly Day)

Names Dropped:

Duncan MacKenzie - https://kurasmackenzie.com/

Brian Andrews - https://www.brianandrews.org/

Ryan Peter Miller - https://ryanpetermiller.com/about

Mark Jeffery - https://www.saic.edu/profiles/faculty/mark-jeffery

Judd Morrissey - https://www.saic.edu/profiles/faculty/judd-morrissey

Kristin Mariani - https://www.saic.edu/profiles/faculty/kristin-mariani

Kelly Kaczynski - https://kellyfkaczynski.com/About

Michelle Grabner - https://www.michellegrabner.com/

Brad Killam - https://cod.edu/faculty/websites/killam.html

Cynthia Post Hunt - https://www.cynthiaposthunt.com/about

Aldo Leopold - https://aldoleopold.org/about/aldo-leopold

Shannon Stratton - https://www.shannonraestratton.com/about

Kelly Lloyd - https://www.k-lloyd.com/bio-statement

Chris Wood - https://mcachicago.org/whats-on/events/the-poor-farm-a-poortch-theater-midwest-redux/

Corey Smith - https://coreyds.com/

VALIE EXPORT - https://www.valieexport.at/

Lyubov Popova - https://www.moma.org/artists/4694-liubov-popova

Varvara Stepanova - https://www.moma.org/artists/5643-varvara-stepanova

Kay Rosen - https://www.kayrosen.com/

Sol LeWitt - https://www.moma.org/artists/3528-sol-lewitt

Giotto - https://www.nga.gov/artists/1342-giotto

Caravaggio - https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/michelangelo-merisi-da-caravaggio

Lisa Stone - https://spacesarchives.org/about-us/spaces-board/lisa-stone/

Maria Gaspar - https://mariagaspar.com/bio

Ginger Krebs - https://gingerkrebs.com/home.html

Laura Paige Kyber - https://mcachicago.org/about/who-we-are/people/laura-kyber

Joey Orr - https://joeyorr.com/about/

Moira Brennan - https://www.jeromefdn.org/moira-brennan

Lin Hixson - https://www.everyhousehasadoor.org/

Peter Taub - https://www.pewcenterarts.org/panelist/peter-taub

Vanessa Damilola Macaulay - https://www.vanessamacaulay.com/about

Leon J. Hilton - https://taps.brown.edu/people/leon-hilton

Bonnie Tyler - https://bonnietyler.com/

Mies van der Rohe - https://www.miessociety.org/

Midas (Kelly Kaczynski's dog) - https://kellyfkaczynski.com/About

Leopold Benches / MCA Chicago - https://mcachicago.org/whats-on/events/the-poor-farm-a-poortch-theater-midwest-redux/

Poor Farm Experiment - https://poorfarmexperiment.org/

Living Within the Play: nido V - https://poorfarmexperiment.org/?page_id=1427

Spudnik Press - https://www.spudnikpress.org/

MCA Talk: Performance Art in Chicago - https://mcachicago.org/whats-on/events/mca-talk-performance-art-in-chicago/

What if the problem with Chicago's art world isn't a shortage of artists, galleries, institutions, or ideas—but a shortage of connective tissue?

This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie sits down at the Gertie Hub with Gertie founder Abby Pucker and Head of Programming, Partnerships & Membership Chanelle Lacy for a conversation about building audiences, building collectors, and building cultural infrastructure in Chicago.

The story starts with Gertie's origin: Abby's long-running interest in getting people into the same room, her return to Chicago during COVID, and a listening tour that revealed a strange contradiction. Chicago had museums, galleries, artists, spaces, and ambitious programming everywhere—but plenty of people still felt like they had nowhere to go and no way into the culture. Gertie emerged as an attempt to close that gap.

From there, the conversation becomes a much bigger argument about Chicago. Why does the city produce so many remarkable artists and cultural workers while remaining so difficult for mid-career artists to sustain? When does Chicago's legendary self-reliance become a silo? What happens when "we don't care what New York thinks" stops being freedom and starts becoming a defensive posture? And what kind of infrastructure would make it easier for artists to stay, return, grow, and find audiences here?

That leads directly into Chicago Exhibition Week, running September 14–20, 2026: Gertie's citywide effort to make Chicago's existing cultural ecosystem radically easier to enter. Abby and Chanelle talk maps, directories, marketing, partnerships, galleries, museums, new collectors, and the deceptively difficult work of getting people off Instagram and through the door.

Along the way, Duncan asks the most basic—and maybe hardest—question: what is the value argument for art? Chanelle answers that art lets us see the world through someone else's eyes and creates a context for difficult conversations. Abby talks about curiosity, connection, discovery, and the pleasure of feeling "in on" a cultural conversation. All three keep circling the same problem: who is building new art fans now?

The discussion also wanders happily through Riot Fest, music-festival graphics, the Armory, Coachella, Lollapalooza, art fairs, neighborhood galleries, collecting, Chicago parking, and the possibility of turning a finance professional into an art freak.

Then the radio fades out...

In the internet-only nugget, the conversation gets into the brass tacks: Gertie Curious and Gertie Curated, membership programming, collection and studio visits, cultural travel, and the relationship between membership and the organization's public-facing work. From there, Abby and Duncan go deep on a question Bad at Sports has wrestled with for years: why build a cultural organization as a for-profit instead of a nonprofit?

That opens a long discussion about philanthropy, grants, mission creep, institutional agility, donor power, KPIs, governance, learned dependency, the economics of culture, and whether an art industry can be sustained almost entirely by galleries, auction houses, and charitable giving.

The answer, at least here, is not especially tidy—which is why it is worth listening to.

It may, however, begin with Abby's simplest proposition:

It's cool to care.

NAME DROPS / FURTHER READING Guests / Gertie

•

Gertie — https://www.gertie.co/

•

Abby Pucker / Chanelle Lacy / Gertie team — https://www.gertie.co/about

•

Gertie membership — https://www.gertie.co/membership

•

Gertie Instagram — @gertie.chicago — https://www.instagram.com/gertie.chicago/

Chicago Exhibition Week

•

Chicago Exhibition Week 2026 — September 14–20, 2026 — https://www.chicagoexhibitionweek.com/

•

CXW 2026 map — https://www.chicagoexhibitionweek.com/2026-map

Gertie exhibitions discussed

•

82 Nights Only* — September 16–December 13, 2026, Gertie Hub — https://www.gertie.co/exhibitions/82-nights-only

•

Over My Head: Encounters with Conceptual Art in a Flyover City, 1984–2015 — https://www.gertie.co/exhibitions/over-my-head

•

Ornament & Information — Chicago Cultural Center — https://www.gertie.co/exhibitions/ornament-and-information

Earlier projects / people

•

Art in Common — co-founded by Zoe Lukov — https://www.artincommon.art/about-2

•

Zoe Lukov — https://www.zoelukov.com/about-mission — Instagram: @zoelukov

•

Next Stop: Chicago — https://www.nextstopchicago.co/

•

Neighbors art fair — https://www.neighbors.art/

•

Mirka Serrato / Neighbors background

•

Vic Mensa — Next Stop: Chicago.

Chicago art ecosystem / venues

•

Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago — https://mcachicago.org/

•

Art Institute of Chicago — https://www.artic.edu/

•

The Renaissance Society — https://www.renaissancesociety.org/

•

Chicago Cultural Center — https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/chicago_culturalcenter.html

•

SECRIST | BEACH — https://secristbeach.com/

•

Spudnik Press Cooperative — https://www.spudnikpress.org/

•

Corbett vs. Dempsey — https://corbettvsdempsey.com/

•

Recess — https://recesschicago.com/

•

All Together Now — https://www.alltogethernow.fun/

•

SVRN — https://www.svrn.com/

Music / festival / cultural comparisons

•

Riot Fest — https://riotfest.org/

•

Mike "Riot Mike" Petryshyn — Riot Fest founder

•

The Armory Show — https://www.thearmoryshow.com/

•

Lollapalooza — https://www.lollapalooza.com/

•

Coachella — https://www.coachella.com/

•

Knockdown Center — https://knockdown.center/

Membership-program references

•

The Joffrey Ballet — https://joffrey.org/

•

Lyric Opera of Chicago — https://www.lyricopera.org/

•

Art Basel Paris — https://www.artbasel.com/paris

Other institutions / art-market references

•

Gagosian — https://gagosian.com/

•

Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) — https://www.moma.org/

•

Barnes Foundation — https://www.barnesfoundation.org/

•

Bad at Sports — https://badatsports.com/

•

Lumpen Radio / WLPN 105.5 FM — https://lumpenradio.com/

What if the most radical thing an artist can do right now is… take their time?

This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with curators Abigail Winograd and Dieter Roelstraete, a.k.a. DRAW, to talk about their recent GRAY Chicago exhibition, IT'S ABOUT TIME: Counterproductive Conceptualisms in Chicago.

Originally conceived under the much more dangerous title "Slacker Conceptualism," the exhibition gathers ten Chicago-based or Chicago-trained artists around a shared suspicion of productivity, professionalism, polish, legibility, self-branding, and the endless demand that artists explain themselves.

The conversation starts with artists who take years to finish paintings, lean things against walls rather than attach them, make objects that seem almost perversely uninterested in becoming commodities, and cultivate what Abigail and Dieter call a kind of "studied nonchalance."

From there, things get bigger.

What does it mean to make political art without making your politics immediately legible? What happens when opacity becomes an act of resistance? Can refusing productivity itself be political? Why does Chicago—with its strange combination of universities, affordable-ish space, artist-run culture, deep pedagogical histories, and relative distance from the market machinery of New York—make this particular kind of artistic life possible?

Along the way we get Pope.L, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Michael Asher, Bas Jan Ader, Josef Strau, Cologne in the 1990s, Gen-X slackerdom, cringe comedy, unfinished paintings, unopened packages, boats, sawhorses, kitchen cabinets, artist losers, artist attitudes, the fetish of identity, the problem with virtue signaling, and the revolutionary possibility of simply refusing to hustle.

And then the radio turns off.

In the web-only afterparty, the conversation expands into earlier generations of Chicago conceptualism, center-versus-periphery arguments, the weird provincialism of assuming New York remains the center of American art, and finally the uncomfortable relationship between art schools, enormous tuition bills, professionalization, and the economic pressure placed on young artists to turn artistic practice into a viable career.

Is the artist supposed to produce? Explain? Sell? Educate? Perform an identity? Change the world?

Or can you just be an artist?

Apparently, in Chicago, you can at least try.

NAME DROPS / FURTHER READING

The exhibition

• IT'S ABOUT TIME: Counterproductive Conceptualisms in Chicago — GRAY Chicago, July 10–August 22, 2026. Exhibition text, artists, checklist, installation views, and curatorial essay: GRAY — IT'S ABOUT TIME
• DRAW — the curatorial collaboration of Abigail Winograd and Dieter Roelstraete. The exhibition page includes biographies of both curators: DRAW / GRAY exhibition page

Curators

• Abigail Winograd — independent curator and writer; co-curator/co-commissioner of Jeffrey Gibson's 2024 U.S. Pavilion and former Neubauer Collegium Visiting Fellow: Abigail Winograd — Neubauer Collegium
• Dieter Roelstraete — curator at the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, University of Chicago; former MCA Chicago curator and documenta 14 curatorial team member: Dieter Roelstraete — Neubauer Collegium

Artists in IT'S ABOUT TIME

• Alex Chitty: https://alexchitty.com/
• Shir Ende: shirende.com
• Max Guy: https://maxguy.studio/
• Jinn Bronwen Lee: https://jinnbronwenlee.com/
• Dave Lloyd — see the GRAY exhibition page for works and installation views: Dave Lloyd in IT'S ABOUT TIME
• Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle: Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle — artist information and website
• Devin T. Mays — see the GRAY exhibition page: Devin T. Mays in IT'S ABOUT TIME
• Pope.L: Pope.L — MoMA
• Nick Raffel — see the GRAY exhibition page: Nick Raffel in IT'S ABOUT TIME
• Miao Wang — see the GRAY exhibition page: Miao Wang in IT'S ABOUT TIME

Conceptual-art ancestors, fellow travelers, and troublemakers

• Michael Asher — conceptual artist and legendary CalArts teacher whose practice becomes an important reference point in the conversation: Michael Asher — CalArts / MOCA overview
• Bas Jan Ader — particularly In Search of the Miraculous and Ader's subsequent association with failure, romantic conceptualism, and the mythology of the "artist loser": Bas Jan Ader — Estate / Meliksetian | Briggs
• Josef Strau — artist and author of "The Nonproductive Attitude," one of the central intellectual reference points for the exhibition: Josef Strau — Whitney Museum
• Christopher Williams - https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/christopher-williams
• Lawrence Weiner - https://www.mariangoodman.com/artists/70-lawrence-weiner/
• Günther Förg - https://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/19427-gunther-forg/
• Martin Kippenberger - https://www.maxhetzler.com/artists/martin-kippenberger
• Albert Oehlen - https://gagosian.com/artists/albert-oehlen/
• Bennett Simpson - https://heni.com/news?artist=Bennett%20Simpson
• Hannah Arendt - https://hac.bard.edu/about/hannaharendt/
• Sigmund Freud - https://www.freud-museum.at/en/
• Dan Peterman - http://www.danpeterman.com/
• Michelle Grabner - https://www.jamescohan.com/artists/michelle-grabner
• Josh Kline - https://www.lissongallery.com/artists/josh-kline

Institutions / places

• GRAY Chicago
• Renaissance Society
• Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society
• University of Chicago
• Northwestern University
• University of Illinois Chicago
• School of the Art Institute of Chicago
• Columbia College Chicago
• Art Institute of Chicago
• MCA Chicago
• ICA Boston
• Regards Gallery

Image:

Dieter Roelstraete and Abigail Winograd

Photo by Robert Chase Heishman. Image courtesy of

GRAY Chicago/New York

Blurb: Daniel Tucker interviews Georgia Kotretsos about her work with the ΤΗΕ ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY which is conceived of as a Arts & Culture Research Lab Observatorium with projects throughout Greece and beyond. This interview was conducted at the Twenty-First International Conference on the Arts in Society conference "Modeling Life Systems: Art, Algorithms, Ecologies" at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. Bio:

Georgia Kotretsos is a visual artist, researcher, the founder of the nonprofit organization THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY, Arts & Culture Research Lab Observatorium, in Athens, Greece and the publisher of TTS Press, which operates in the field of cultural studies and art research in Greece, the Balkans, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. TTS focuses on the Greek periphery, the islands, and remote areas. It creates interdisciplinary teams tailored for each project, working collaboratively on site-specific intangible projects that uncover the unique aspects of each locale.

TTS publications are available at the following bookstores: Politeia, Ianos, Museum of Cycladic Art, Iambos, Pixel,and Public (online). Through these endeavors, THE TEΛΟΣ SOCIETY highlights the importance of contemporary art and cultural heritage while fostering new creative perspectives and audiences.

She holds an MFA in Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (USA, 2004), where she studied on a full merit-based scholarship, and a BFA from the Durban Institute of Technology in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa (2000), where she relocated as a teenager during the country's post-apartheid transition.

Her work systematically critiques conventional theoretical positions on viewing and perceiving artworks, seeking—through liberatory and anarchic visual practices—to reveal that the experience of viewing is site-specific, and that the emancipation of the viewer is a crucial source of artistic knowledge. Her research-based approach—whether in the form of artwork, text, or interview—resists traditional forms and historical modes of acquiring knowledge, proposing alternative methodologies for its creation and reception.

Her work has been presented both in Greece and internationally, including at the Onassis Art Center and the Asia Society in New York, the 4th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, the Tinguely Museum (Basel), La Kunsthalle (Mulhouse), the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art (Thessaloniki), and the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis. She has held seven solo exhibitions and participated in numerous significant international initiatives, including the 56th Venice Biennale, MediaImpact in Moscow, and FIELD MEETING in New York.

From 2006 to 2010, she co-founded the independent art space Boots Contemporary Art Space in St. Louis, USA—an alternative contemporary art laboratory—and served as editor-in-chief of BootPrint, a biannual journal by and for artists. From 2009 to 2013, she served as a columnist for Art21 Magazine of PBS Arts Feature in New York, with her column Inside the Artist's Studio. In 2014, her writing was also published on http://labkultur.tv/ in Germany. In 2019, Kotretsos published a report on the arts in Greece reflecting on the decade of recession 2008-18 entitled "Athens is the Only Cave in the World that has a Skylight" for the Field Journal in the US.

Her works are held in private collections, including the National Bank of Greece, the Mamidakis Foundation, and others.

More information about her work can be found at: http://www.georgiakotretsos.com/ | http://www.thetelossociety.com/

Georgia Kotretsos portrait for RTIN by Kostas Pappas

and the TTS Logo

Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with artist Claire Ashley at the Door County Contemporary Art Fair for a conversation that wanders from broken-down minivans to Scottish standing stones, from inflatable sculpture to protest aesthetics, and from the economics of artistic survival to the philosophy of color.

Ashley discusses nearly two decades of building monumental inflatable sculptures that refuse to stay still—works that exist somewhere between architecture, bodies, creatures, performance, and public intervention. They explore why artists should embrace experimentation, why humor can be politically powerful, and how softness, absurdity, and vulnerability can become serious sculptural strategies.

Links

•

Claire Ashley — https://clairehelenashley.com/

•

Door County Contemporary Art Fair — https://www.doorcountycontemporary.com/

•

Lee Bontecou — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Bontecou

•

Nick Cave — https://nickcaveart.com/Main/Intro.html

•

Paul McCarthy —https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_McCarthy

•

José Lerma — https://kavigupta.com/artists/42-jose-lerma/

•

Weisman Art Museum — https://wam.umn.edu/

•

Cameron Art Museum — https://cameronartmuseum.org/

•

Saint Kate – The Arts Hotel — https://www.saintkatearts.com/

•

Callanish Standing Stones — https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/calanais-standing-stones/

•

Isle of Lewis — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Lewis

Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with artist, curator, arts administrator, and Door County Contemporary co-founder Jaymee Harvey Willms for an unexpectedly personal and funny conversation.

What begins as a discussion about goats unfolds into an exploration of grief, religious deconstruction, contemporary art, and the rituals we create to survive profound loss.

Once a painter immersed in saturated color, Jaymee found herself unable to tolerate color at all, turning instead toward broken ceramics, white paint, damaged objects, and sculptures that ask what it means for something broken to continue functioning.

Links

Jaymee Harvey Willms

http://www.jaymeeharveywillms.com/

Door County Contemporary

https://www.doorcountycontemporary.com/

Familiar (Milwaukee)

https://www.familiarmke.com/

Walker Art Center

https://walkerart.org/

Mary Gabriel — Ninth Street Women

https://www.joanmitchellfoundation.org/joan-mitchell/citations/ninth-street-women

Lee Krasner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Krasner

Jackson Pollock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Pollock

JoAnne Carson https://joannecarson.com/

Adam Frelin https://adamfrelin.com/

Hair + Nails https://hairandnailsart.com/

Duncan MacKenzie, Ryan Peter Miller, and Brian Andrews are joined by painter Jenal Dolson for a conversation recorded live from the Door County Contemporary Art Fair in Wisconsin. Dolson discusses her vividly textured paintings, her installation practice, and the role of touch, memory, and sensory experience in shaping the visual language of her work.

The conversation ranges from tactile abstraction and flocked wallpaper to popcorn ceilings, raccoon vision, painting directly onto gallery walls, collaboration, titling artworks, and why artists continue making work in the first place.

Links

Jenal Dolson

•

https://jenaldolson.com/home.html

Andrew Rafacz Gallery

•

https://andrewrafacz.com/

65GRAND

•

https://65grand.com/

Good Naked Gallery

•

https://www.goodnakedgallery.com/

Door County Contemporary

•

https://doorcountycontemporary.com/

Deb Sokolow

•

https://www.debsokolow.com/

Trish Tillman

•

https://www.trishtillman.com/

Rebecca Morris

•

https://www.byrebeccamorris.com/

Chris Cran

•

http://chriscran.com/

Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller finally welcome painter, educator, and perennial instigator Tyson Reeder to Bad at Sports.

Recorded during Door County Contemporary Art Fair, the discussion wanders through the history of Milwaukee's DIY art scene, the legendary Dark Fair, artist-run culture, teaching, painting, collaboration, and the productive tension between sincerity and absurdity.

Reeder reflects on organizing exhibitions as artistic experiments rather than scholarly declarations, describing curating as "a speculative mindset" where the question is always what if?

The conversation also explores painting's unique solitude, collaborative work with his brother Scott Reeder, the role of humor in contemporary art, regional artistic identity, materiality after the pandemic, why artists still need to stand in front of paintings, and how drawing together can become an antidote to digital isolation.

Links

Tyson Reeder https://canadanewyork.com/artists/tyson-reeder

Scott Reeder

https://canadanewyork.com/artists/scott-reeder

Canada Gallery https://canadanewyork.com/

Door County Contemporary Art Fair https://www.doorcountycontemporary.com/

Process Print Shop https://process-process.com/

Swiss Institute https://www.swissinstitute.net/

White Columns https://whitecolumns.org/

Threewalls https://three-walls.org/

Green Gallery http://www.thegreengallery.biz/

Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture https://www.skowheganart.org/

This week Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with artist Sophia Chai at the Door County Contemporary Art Fair to discuss photography that insists on becoming something else. Working between painting, sculpture, installation, and large-format analog photography, Chai creates images that challenge our assumptions about perspective, representation, and the mechanics of seeing itself.

The conversation moves from camera obscuras and four-by-five view cameras to Plato's Allegory of the Cave, cave painting, Korean language, immigration, and the colonial language embedded within photographic practice. Chai reflects on transforming her graduate studio into a walk-in camera obscura after September 11th, collaborating with architectural space rather than simply depicting it, and asks whether photography might become a practice of witnessing rather than capturing.

Name Drops & Links

•

Sophia Chai – https://www.sophiachai.com/

•

Hair + Nails – https://hairandnails.gallery/https://hairandnailsart.com/

•

University of Illinois Chicago School of Art & Art History – https://artandarthistory.uic.edu/

•

Kerry James Marshall – https://kerryjamesmarshall.com/https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/kerry-james-marshall

•

Judith Kirshner – https://artandarthistory.uic.edu/profiles/judith-kirshner/https://stories.mcachicago.org/speaker/judith-kirshner/

•

Plato – https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato/

•

Camera Obscura – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_obscura

•

Plato's Allegory of the Cave – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave

•

Jeff Wall – https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/jeff-wall

•

Barbara Kasten – https://barbarakasten.net/

•

Johannes Vermeer – https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio/artists/johannes-vermeer

•

Peter Jackson – https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001392/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Jackson

•

The Lord of the Rings – https://www.lotr.com/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_(film_series)

Tanner MacArthur joins Bad at Sports live from Door County Contemporary for a conversation that begins with secret fry sauce recipes and somehow ends with the shape of Delaware as a sandwich-eating methodology.

MacArthur discusses his dual role as both artist and gallerist through his Milwaukee project space, Addendum, founded alongside James Stepanek as an extension of No Instructions Gallery. The conversation moves through contemporary painting, Midwestern DIY culture, artist-run spaces, collecting habits in the Midwest, labor history, and the strange but fertile ground between formal abstraction and dumpster diving.

Tanner speaks about his own assemblage-based painting practice, his evolution from hard-edge abstraction into sculptural wall works built from salvaged materials, and his desire to reconnect with painting's possibilities through color, surface, and material experimentation.

The discussion also highlights a growing generation of Milwaukee artists creating new spaces and opportunities outside traditional institutions, including apartment galleries, publishing projects, and experimental exhibition venues.

Name Drops and Links:

•

Tanner MacArthur – https://www.tannermacarthur.com/

•

Addendum Gallery – https://addendum.gallery/

•

No Instructions Gallery – https://www.noinstructs.com/

•

Martyna Alexander – https://www.instagram.com/martyna_alexander

•

Meg White (artist) – https://www.meganwhite.work/

•

Tony Conrad – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Conrad

•

Lawrence University – https://www.lawrence.edu/

•

University of Wisconsin–Madison – https://www.wisc.edu/

•

University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Peck School of the Arts – https://uwm.edu/arts/

•

Experimental Sculpture Room (ESR) – https://experimentalsculptureroom.com/

•

Milwaukee Art Museum – https://mam.org/

•

Gertrude Abercrombie – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Abercrombie

•

Kim Sajet – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Sajet

•

Door County Contemporary – https://www.doorcountycontemporary.com/

This episode on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie, Ryan Peter Miller, and Brian Andrews sit down with artist, organizer, and Door County Contemporary co-founder Shane Walsh at the close of another sunny and slightly delirious weekend in Door County.

The conversation ranges from the growth of the Door County Contemporary fair, the peculiar magic of creating a temporary art community in Wisconsin, and the challenge of building an audience for contemporary art outside major metropolitan centers. Along the way, Shane discusses his own abstract painting practice, the virtues of Detroit-style pizza, and why a successful art fair might really just be "arts summer camp."

Shane talks about the evolution of Door County Contemporary from its inaugural edition into a larger and more ambitious event, reflecting on how local partnerships, community engagement, and a relaxed atmosphere have helped make the fair feel distinct from the larger art-world circuit.

The crew also dives into Shane's own painting practice: lush, unhinged abstractions informed equally by modernist painting histories and the visual language of 1990s punk culture. The result is a conversation about painting, community, and finding ways to make art experiences feel meaningful, generous, and fun.

Name Drops and Links:

•

Shane Walsh – https://www.shanewalshartist.com/https://shanewalshpaintings.com/home.html

•

Door County Contemporary – https://www.doorcountycontemporary.com/

•

Pen Art School of Door County – https://peninsulaschoolofart.org/

•

OS Projects – https://www.os-projects.com/https://www.osprojects.art/

•

Willem de Kooning – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_de_Kooning

•

Helen Frankenthaler – https://www.helenfrankenthaler.org/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Frankenthaler

•

Johnny Carson – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Carson

This week Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller head north to the Door County Contemporary Art Fair to sit down with artist, curator, writer, gallerist, and all-around art evangelist Shane McAdams.

Broadcasting from a gazebo in Door County, Wisconsin, the conversation ranges from the weather, custard, and pontoon boats to larger questions about why contemporary art struggles to reach broader publics, why the Midwest needs more artist-run infrastructure, and how we might create healthier cultural ecosystems.

McAdams makes the case for a bigger, messier, more porous art world—one where commercial galleries, nonprofits, academia, collectors, artists, and curious newcomers all coexist.

This is a conversation about building bridges: between Chicago and Minneapolis, between contemporary art and regional audiences, between artists and the merely art-curious. It is also a reminder that art remains one of the few places where genuine meaning-making and community formation can still occur.

Name Drops

Shane McAdams https://www.shanemcadams.com/

Door County Contemporary Art Fair https://www.doorcountycontemporary.com/

Real Tinsel Gallery https://www.realtinsel.com/

Saint Kate – The Arts Hotel https://www.saintkatearts.com/

Peninsula School of Art https://www.peninsulaschoolofart.org/

Claire Ashley https://clairehelenashley.com/

David Letterman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Letterman

Marcel Duchamp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Duchamp

Robert Ryman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Ryman

James Audubon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_James_Audubon

Mark Glimcher / Pace Gallery https://www.pacegallery.com/

Peter Buggenhout https://www.axel-vervoordt.com/gallery/artists/peter-buggenhout

University of Chicago https://www.uchicago.edu/

University of Georgia Lamar Dodd School of Art https://art.uga.edu/

Trainspotting https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117951/

Miami Art Week https://www.miamiartweek.org/