I know for a fact that there are brilliant studios with white walls and painted ceilings, glowing with LED panels and humming with tastefully sourceless, low-volume public radio; but for young artists plodding through unfunded gap between undergrad and graduate school, sometimes the studio is wherever you can find it. This week Chicago painter and photographer Jacob Goudreault (acceptably mis-pronounced good-row) invited me to his studio in the western suburb of Winfield, tucked in a tiny and mostly unfinished corner in the basement of his parent’s nice big house. As we went downstairs he gestured to the rest of the basement, sparse and freshly occupied by a pool table and a few boxes. “I used to have this whole space before we put the carpet in.”

Jacob Goudreault

As the most hyper-provisional of the city’s sculptural painters fascinated with shitty materials and gross surfaces, Goudreault’s dim studio makes sense. He points out some of the paints he’s been using, Craftsmart acrylics in aisle ten pinks and greens. A few of his small paintings show the neon paint almost shattered on the surface, a result of the temperature shift between his car and his studio. Bottle caps serve as hanging devices, staple gunned to the back of the scrap-wood blocks he stretches paper and fabric and second hand cashmere over. The work was clever and reveled in its rough edges, a play off of materials and grunge that make me wonder whether the lights were low on purpose.

Jacob Goudreault

Jacob Goudreault

While Goudreault keeps another studio in the West Loop and works on occasion up at the Poor Farm estate, much of his smaller and recent paintings he’s known for are made here in the Winfield space. If you’re looking to see that new work, you’re in luck: most of the paintings are downtown or close to it, currently installed in the Fever Dream group show at Roots and Culture or getting ready for the upcoming Vibrator at Knock Knock Gallery.