Last week I visited the studio of Chicago artist Montgomery Perry Smith, who’s captain-of-industry name gives good cover for a delicate and softly disturbing fiber-heavy sculpture practice. I’d first run into his work at a show at the (now closed) Humboldt Park apartment gallery MVSEVM, where his interactive papasan-and-felt sculpture Soul Searching was a complete creepy success, and after spotting his name on the fall season’s opening weekend roster with a solo show at Johalla Projects, asked to come by for some photos and a short interview. Enjoy.

Montgomery Perry Smith

Could you tell me about yourself and your history in Chicago?

I came to Chicago from Dallas, TX in 2004 to get my BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  I originally planned on studying drawing and painting, but quickly moved to the Fiber and Material Studies department. When I graduated in 2008, I started to get involved with the Harold Arts Residency and have worked closely with them since.

Montgomery Perry Smith

You use a lot of found materials in your work – decorative flowers, glass domes, furniture parts, etc. Where do you hunt for these, and what attracts you to certain items? Do you generally set off knowing what you’re looking for, or do the pieces follow the objects you find?

I find most of my materials at thrift and craft stores. Sometimes I’ll have a specific object to find when I’m making a piece, but a couple pieces have been inspired by the random items I come across. These objects tend to be strange yet familiar, and carry their own loaded history.

Montgomery Perry Smith

Your pieces can be really confrontational, and some (like Soul Searcher or Bottom Feeder) sort of loom in space in a freaky way, but the materials you use and the internal parts also invite up-close interaction. How do you want viewers to engage with your work?

I want viewers to get up close and explore my pieces. Many of them have hidden pockets and crevices that require further inspection.  I like these different layers of exploring; there will always be the photographed image of the piece, but the viewer needs to have their face up in it to fully engage it.

Montgomery Perry Smith, oh honey baby (detail)

Could you describe a piece you’re working on now?

I’m finishing up a piece for the “pit worship” show right now. It has a baby blue pallet and a lot of lace and daisies. It’s very celebratory but sickening at the same time.

Montgomery Perry Smith

If you’d like to see more of Montgomery Perry Smith, check out his new show Pit Worship opening this Saturday, September 11th from 7-11 PM @ Johalla Projects, 1561 N Milwaukee Ave.

Here are this week’s picks on what to see this weekend. As always, more and other listings can be found here and here.

Deborah Stratman @ Gahlberg Gallery

Chicago artist and film-maker Deborah Stratman has installed a gallery converting installation combining improvisational architecture and booming, disorienting sound at the Gahlberg Gallery in Glen Ellyn. I strongly recommend coming out to see it, though I admit I swung a hammer on the installation team. The opening reception is Thursday, September 2nd from 6 – 8 PM @ Gahlberg Gallery, 425 Fawell Blvd, Glen Ellyn. Also on view are paintings from Raychael Stine.

Deborah Stratman

Patricia Treib @ GOLDEN

Golden is hosting New York painter Patricia Treib for her first Chicago solo show. The paintings look nice, and both her big canvasses and smaller works on paper will be on display.You can catch it Friday, September 3rd from 6 – 9 PM @ GOLDEN, 816 W Newport Ave. Golden’s new aux space will also be holding a show on that same night, featuring more NYC work from artists Richard Aldrich, Jessica Dickinson, Josephine Halvorson, Erik Lindman and Eric Palgon. That show opens at 9 PM @ 3319 N Broadway St.

Patricia Treib, Untitled

Ben Russell @ Museum of Contemporary Art

A new month means a new UBS 12×12 at the MCA, and this time around is Ben Russell, well known for his work in video as well as his Pilsen gallery space. Russell’s show will incorporate a site-specific video installation of his seven-part Badlands National Park LSD trip report. The show opens Saturday, but there is also a reception on Friday, September 3rd at 6:00 PM @ the Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E Chicago Ave.

Ben Russell, Trypps #7 (Badlands)

Todd Chilton and Mike Peter Smith @ Slow

New-geo surfacey painter Chicago painter Todd Chilton pairs up with New York sculptor Mike Peter Smith for a compare and contrast show this month at Slow gallery. I’m looking forward to seeing how Peter Smith’s (excellent) doom and paradise sculptures meet up with Chilton’s disrupted canvasses. Show opens on Saturday, September 4th from 6 – 9 PM @ Slow, 2153 W 21st St.

Mike Peter Smith, Island

good luck!

Ryan’s off this week, so here are this week’s picks from me.

Siobhan Liddell, Untitled

Jeffrey Cortland Jones, Short

Chris Ashley, Moonlight

Jon Poblador, Sedona

Judith Belzer, Cracks & Fissures #13

John Zurier, Muuratsalo 1

Caragh Thuring, Soldiers of the 10th Light Dragoons

we are all made of stairs

Abstract composition is hard in 2010. Off-the-head, sourceless abstraction relying on internalized visual patterns and analytics cuts too close to expressionism for some, while sourced, referential abstraction can bring up a language problem related to the source’s content. Chicago artist Carrie Gundersdorf goes for the latter option, sourcing her abstract paintings and drawings from technologically removed nature. The process makes for good paintings, but it also maybe (maybe) risks her being mistaken for a space painter in the same way Melissa Oresky might be mistaken for a rock painter. Comes with the territory, I guess.

One important note is that while Gundersdorf’s work is based on photos of star paths generated by time-lapse night photography, spectral readings of distant bodies, or false-color analyses of space phenomena, those source images all require special cameras or machines which themselves visually abstract reality in their documentation. The paintings and drawings that result are therefor double abstractions, and even while resembling their sources are free to separate from them and look like straighter abstract paintings.

Carrie Gundersdorf, Star Trails w/ fish-eye lens

While the work that best fit that description was up at the Gundersdorf’s 12×12 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Gundersdorf was also showing a new and different body in The bottom of photos that look up at the sky and other observations., a small concurrent exhibition at Julius Caesar.

Here her source material became the work, with the artist’s collection of astronomical clippings arranged into loosely gridded, dry-stacked collages. The show’s title applied to a few of the pieces, in pieces where the horizon silhouettes against skies lit with splashing painterly auroras, but just as many of the pieces were reworked and re-sampled images. The sun was shown in repeated and rotated portraits, Saturns rings became beautiful tiles of shattered strokes, and pixelated shifts pulsed across the page. The collages’ relationship to Gundersdorf’s other work was clear, and anyone familiar with her paintings would easily recognize these as coming from her studio.

Though there isn’t any paint involved, the pieces all clearly shared the vocabulary of painting. What was missing was a sense of weight, material unity, and the physicality that is a constant in painting but is almost always absent from the delicate and dexterous medium of photo collage. On such light structures, the painterly gestures in The bottom of photos that look up at the sky and other observations. came off more slight and quietly than I was used to seeing. This relatively young body of work, while promising and beautiful at its peaks, seemed to demand more physicality to carry its formal content.

I give the show a:

7.2

Carrie Gundersdorf’s The bottom of photos that look up at the sky and other observations. ran from August 1st to August 29th, 2010 @ Julius Caesar, 3144 W Carroll Ave, 2G.

Carrie Gundersdorf

Carrie Gundersdorf

Carrie Gundersdorf

Carrie Gundersdorf

Carrie Gundersdorf