I’m back in Chicago and venturing further outside Hyde Park. On a warm clear spring evening, I went to the Bridgeport neighborhood, where a big old warehouse has been converted to studio space for dozens of artists. On the third Friday of every month, the center opens its doors to the public to come look. And so I did.
The Bridgeport Art Center is housed in the old Spiegel Catalog warehouse on West 35th Street. It’s a fabulous space with hundreds of tall windows, exposed brick walls, enormous industrial sliding doors, beautifully distressed hardwood floors, capacious elevators, and soaring skylights. The interior has been built out into studio spaces of varying sizes, ranging from spaces that are only slightly larger than office cubicles to large rooms containing fully-equipped carpentry workshops. Many of the artists’ studios were works of art themselves.
I wandered into room 4011, Tamara Wasserman’s studio. Tamara was born in Riga, emigrated to Jerusalem in her teens, and moved to Chicago in her adult years. Her speech is crisp and melodic, with charming notes of Latvian, Hebrew, and Chicagoese. I wasn’t surprised to learn that she derives most of her income as a simultaneous translator — that is, when she isn’t working as a puppeteer. I loved her work, especially a painting with a Gauginesque central figure, mysterious open empty boxes, and scrawled Cyrillic lettering. It was, of course, the one canvas in her studio that was not for sale.
Here are the tools of her trade:
I’m always reluctant to photograph the creations of working artists. I make an exception for Unauthorized Public Art, since I reckon that the artists who create it offer it for free to the public at large. So although I was invited to, I didn’t photograph the works in Tamara’s studio or anyone else’s. The photo below was not taken by me, however, and is posted on Tamara’s website. The painting above and behind Tamara is the one I was so taken by.
Between the old warehouse and a stagnant riverway, next to a bridge pier, a big man in a dirty kilt had started a fire fueled by discards from his woodshop. The small blaze drew people like moths.
The studio building’s fire escape loomed above us. The sky at the moment where dusk slides into night was impossibly blue. I looked up and felt a touch of vertigo.
Rolls of razor wire were spun next to the bridge above us, presumably to prevent people from getting to the very place where we sat.
There was a forbidding steel door in the pier that supported the bridge. I tried it out of habit and, to my surprise, found that it was unlocked. Inside, under the roadway, there was evidence that someone had recently (with apologies to W.S. Mewrwin) “there established his bad castle.”
One of the people sitting by the fire saw a river rat saunter by. I stayed a little while longer enjoying the first warm night of the year and, as I have done in so many other places, vowed to return someday.
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