Well, K. The diorama show is NEXT weekend, so I'll write about it then. But I did stop by a little pop-up gallery show in my neighborhood last Friday. "Run Blago Run" took over a closed beauty shop (formerly called Head Bang) for three days only. Graffiti and street-art style works were on display, all based around the subject of our delinquent ex-governor Rod Blagojevich. Graphic and pun-ny, the show offered good imagery, but remained surface in content. I liked the Blago stencils in situ much better. The gallery context sort of stunted the message.
Seeing these suspicious figures lurking under bridges and in dark alleys all around Chicago just seems more appropriate for representations of Blago. 
What I found most interesting about the show, is that the guy responsible for the stencils, Ray Noland, is racking up the credit for these designs. (He also did several stencils of Obama speaking into microphones plugged in to "America" around election time.) Although at the same time, with all the media on him, he is carefully avoiding blame for actually stenciling Chicago property--as he would be confessing to multiple felonies. This elusive "graffiti fame" has me thinking a lot about "artist fame" in general and the inconvenience of ownership in the underground.Anyway, to totally jump topics...My final class project was based on the idea of guerrilla propaganda. I had students screen print small cards with a message of their choice--a test in visual communication as well as print-making methods. They did an amazing job! Check it out:
That's all for now. Miss ya!k
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