Bad at Sports

A few years ago, we put together so much content in the context of NADA art Fair Miami and New York that we have been sitting on a handful of great stuff (like for years)… And you are going to get to hear it all as we get prepared for Chicago's EXPO this spring!   Kicking it all off this week Dana and Duncan chat with Miami legend, Agustina Woodgate.   We talk… Miami Water and Power RADIOEE The Wh...

Language lovers rejoice — the blab at sporkers transmit live to tape from the exhibition Glossolalia, hosted at ACRE (hosted by Drama Club) with our guests David Sprecher and Jeff Prokash. Their collaborative show, which performs a complicated material translation of an excerpt of a Franny Choi poem, is up through the weekend and includes a series of readings this Saturday (2/25/23) amidst and amo...

This week Duncan sits down with Paul Gray in front of a live audience at Columbia College Chicago to talk about the history of Gray Gallery, the legacy of Richard Gray, how "the sausage gets made" in the art world, 60 years of supporting artists and what the next 60 years will look like, and Marcel Proust? Just another day of spectacular work for Gray Gallery, Coulumbia, and Bad at Sports.

This week we come at you live from Printed Matter in New York City with Christopher Sperandio of the Kartoon Kings . We talk about his recent flurry of publications, how the pandemic has impacted publishing and the art world, the potency of Instagram, and the failure of NFTs. Max Schumann Jumps in from the audience to talk about the mission of Printed Matter and query the separation between artist...

Wowow! Around an arts and crampy table in an anonymous but lively third space in the Southern Loop of Chicago, some of our top minds and movers convene to chat about past, present and futures of Chicago DIY/DIT artist-organizing. Jesse, Duncan and eventually Ryan — slouches in their own rights — lead by following a disparate flow. A champagne bottle to share with 300 people! Leave a masterpiece, t...

This week Brian and Duncan muse about color with design duo Luftwerk. The Chicago-based collaborative Petra Bachmaier & Sean Gallero entrance us into their series of sculptural light installations using botanical pigments and dynamic lights currently on view at the Chicago Cultural Center.

This week Bad at Sports catches up with Wisconsin's pride, the Wormfarm Institute, with Jay Salinas. We learn more about a long running experiment in arts funding between the fine states of Wisconsin and Minneapolis. We learn about how sustainable agriculture and contemporary art have found an unusual marriage, and take a D-Tour. Then we open the door two adventure and the future of contemporary p...

Live from our tailgate at the MdW fair we bring you part two of a series we are doing with the organizing members of the MdW and a wrap up conversation that looks at the current state of arts organizing. But this week we have Confluence Studio, Duaba Unenra and Sam Gould, then are joined by Amy Kligman of the Charlotte Street Foundation. We learn about contemporary policing practice in MN and how...

Here we are here we are finishing out our roundup with the end of our "spot check" in Calgary Alberta, Canada, and we close out with the Western Canadian performance art legend Rita McKeough.   Rita McKeough is an installation and performance artist whose practice is based in Calgary. Her work incorporates audio, electronics and mechanical performing objects. Since the late 70s, McKeough has been...

The Badlands Art Department - Jason de Haan and Miruna Dragan   In this episode Duncan visited "Drumheller" in the "Badlands" of "Alberta." We learn a little about life, love, and the magic that can happen way outside the centers. CONTEMPORARY ART FOR ALL! And natural beauty and leisure for artists! Jason de Haan is a multidisciplinary Canadian artist working in installation, sculpture, video, dra...

Kate gives us the low down on what ACRE has been up to and why we aught to be filling out our Chicago Arts Census. In a magic episode in which Brian is introduced to the cult of ACRE and we glimpse the utopia of artistic support, community, and friendship.   Book:  Understanding the Arts and Creative Sector in the United States Edited by, Joni Maya Cherbo, Margaret Jane Wyszomirski, Ruth Ann Stewa...

This week we check in with two members of the MdW art fair and assembly brain trust, Nicholas Wylie and Brandon Alvendia and learn a little bit about drifts. This marks a true return to form as we tailgate an art fair and record while feeding hot dogs, Marz beer, and vegetarian chili to all those true lovers of art. Then we spend a few minutes chatting with the brilliant John Engelbercht and Kalmi...

Teresa Tam's practice utilizes spaces and experiences that are familiar and then alters them into something a bit foreign through re-interpretation and re-creation. She likes to conceive her projects as sketches: iterations of ideas and systems rendered but never reaching finality. Her work is also developed to include and emphasize visitor interactions as integral components. She focuses on theme...

Today on Bad at Sportscenter: Devin Balara and Bobby Gonzales! Another little transportive interview from summer sessions at the Ox-Bow School of Art in Saugatuck, be ears now and listen in to what a porch-hang with two generous geniuses and (whatever we'd call a) Jesse. Enjoy a careening, ebullient conversation in never mids west.  http://cargocollective.com/ devinbalara https://bobby-gonzales.co...

Tamara Lee-Anne Cardinal is a mixed-media artist, community activist, and perpetual learner. Born in Lloydminster, Saskatchewan, she has been a visitor to Otôskwanihk/Mohkinstsis (Calgary) for the past nine years. Cardinal traces her ancestral roots back to both Nêhiyaw and Deutsch decent. Graduating from AUArts in 2015, Cardinal has since been a recipient of the National BMO 1st Art! Competition...

The Earth is changing. Quickly. Should we be afraid? Or can we embrace the changes and challenges and boldly look ahead? Can we build a new, better life on this planet? Ryan and Brian sit down with curator Nick Butcher and artists Allen Moore and Kat Jarvinen of The New Earth  to find out. https://publicworksgallery.com/blogs/exhibitions/the-new-earth https://publicworksgallery.com/ https://katjar...

Artists duo Sans façon (Charles Blanc and Tristan Surtees) began working together in 2001 in Glasgow, Scotland. Their diverse practice responds to the relationship between people and place. Collaborating with architects, composers, geographers, or perfumers, they work internationally on projects ranging from ephemeral performances, temporary installations in public space, large scale permanent art...

Selina  Trepp—visual musician, collage animist, radical recycler—talks time, process, performance, material and more on the occasion of  An Instrument in the Shape of a Woman  at the Chicago Cultural Center. Our dynamic and inspired conversation zooms through the multiplicities of ways  Selina 's playful practice breaks open the forms and formats she's drawn to (and drawing on). Once again we're j...

asmaa al-issa (b. Baghdad, Iraq) immigrated to Mohkínstsis/Calgary, Alberta, Canada with her family in 2001. Her interdisciplinary practice engages her lived experiences with the land, materials, and people around her. She is continually building knowledge of recipes, traditions, philosophies, theories, and histories of the Middle East while developing her practice as an artist and educator. asmaa...

Socially engaged watercolor sampler and plein air painter extraordinaire Leslie Baum and curator Annie Morse join us for part two of our series interviewing the three artists featured in  An Instrument in the Shape of a Woman  at the Chicago Cultural Center. Baum's sumptuous, joyous paintings are attended in this exhibition by a "pedagogical shelf", a vitrine that runs perpendicular (both physical...

Today, your Bad at Sportscenterers take refuge in Diane Christiansen's room at the Chicago Cultural Center's exhibition  An Instrument in the Shape of a Woman . Her enrapturing paintings and animations play tricks in the cosmic sands as we feel and laugh our way through the existential biggies, buoyed by bodies, icons and acorns. Curator Annie Morse helps lead our sense of the exhibition and takes...

Nura Ali's wide-ranging practise investigates the linguistic scaffolding upholding the assumptions we bring to the act of reading and writing. We speak about her most recent exhibition, blackness, whole-ness, the power of language, and the power of cultural unions.   Nura Ali is a visual artist, writer and curator, living and working in Calgary, Alberta. She received a BFA in Visual Art from Emily...

Today on Bad at Sportscenter: Kelly Lloyd! Yes, that one. Kelly and Jesse sit down in the cupola at the Ox-Bow School of Art — mere hectometers from where they met almost a decade ago — to talk about practice (and practice talking), about the naming of the thing, about art education and parties. Kelly's practice spans genre and form and most actively in this moment revolves around her research and...

Caitlind r.c. Brown & Wayne Garrett Caitlind r.c. Brown & Wayne Garrett explore the interspace between seemingly polarized entities: light + dark, nature + culture, DIY + institutional, individual + collective. Based in Calgary/Mohkinstsis, the duo centres their practice in relational space, conceptualizing installations and interventions primarily for the public realm. Their projects beckon viewe...

This week, a little nod to the Lore is Ness sector of our collective imaginary as John Rossi and Mac Akin join Jesse in a conversation about their practices, their lives at the Ox-Bow School of Art and Artist Residency in Saugatuck, MI and their intersects. Through a meandering exploration of the psychic and physical, we learn more about the folk horror legend of the Prickerman, the strange shibbo...