For the past couple of months, I've been writing reviews of the
refreshments served at art gallery openings, for my wife Stephanie
Burke's blog. For
those readers who haven't been following it there, I'll repost the
introduction here, so you can see where I'm coming from with this:
Art does not follow the supply-and-demand model of other economies;
rather, individual artists and galleries compete with one another in a
sort of reverse economy, where they vie for the attention of the
viewing public, whose attention creates the value that allows some
artists to command incredible prices for their artworks, while others
would be hard pressed to give their work away. Therefore, galleries
often host opening receptions, intended to generate interest in the
work on exhibit. While commercial galleries are primarily seeking to
attract the attention of collectors, the attention-based model of the
art market requires that they chum the waters, encouraging visitors and
viewers far larger in number than the relatively few collectors who
might actually purchase a work of art. An opening (or in some cases closing) reception is generally hosted on
a Friday evening, and certain conventions are commonplace: there is no
pressure to buy, no sales pitch, just an open invitation to come in and
look at the work. It's usually crowded, often with people you know, if
only from other art openings. And sometimes, there's snacks.
The refreshments served at an art opening may or may not tell you
anything about the gallery and the art. Booze is commonplace. The
traditional offering of a choice of red or white wine is standard in
River North, and is common in the West Loop and elsewhere. Beer is more
common in the West Loop, in other neighborhoods, and in alternative
spaces, apartment galleries, non-profits, etc. Grolsch sponsors some
art spaces, providing them with beer to serve, particularly in the
galleries on Peoria in the West Loop.
Aside from the booze, some galleries offer non-alcoholic beverages, and
snacks. While beverages are standard, the offering of snacks is more
hit-or-miss. Many galleries offer no snacks at all; when offered, they
can range from a bowl of peanuts to an elaborate buffet; Nicole Gallery practically fed everyone dinner on the season opening night.
It's been two weeks since my last snack report, last weekend there was
so little going on, due to Thanksgiving, that I thought I'd roll last
week's report into this week's. I should say a little something about
Thanksgiving, since it's pretty much our main holiday dedicated to
snacks. We started a little early; Stephanie cooked up an awesome meal
(with a little help from our friends) the Saturday before Thanksgiving
(that is, two weeks ago today). Unfortunately we had to skip the
opening at Concertina, which I regret.
We had an awesome ham; we buy all our meat out of the back of a white
van that parks in a parking lot near our house, and it's damned good
meat. Check 'em out, I highly recommend them for all your meat needs: http://www.cdfamilyfarms.com. This time we had our ham with a pineapple salsa, which wasn't too
sweet at all. Steph also made her brussels sprouts in maple-mustard
sauce; email her for the recipe, it's awesome. While you're at it, ask
her for her recipe for cream of olive soup, which she also made: it
sounds weird, I know, but it's amazing. For dessert she made
blueberry-raspberry-peach pie. Steph makes the best pies on earth;
Saturday's was good although it would have been better if we'd had
fresh peaches. Canned is okay but a little syrupy. Several of our
friends (and friends of friends) made some stuff too, I remember there
being two potato-based dishes both of which were good. I didn't really
help cook, but I did use the entrenching tool out of the back of our
Jeep to dig a fire pit, dug through our host's neighbors' dumpster for
wood to burn, and built a damned good fire.
One of our friends who ate with us on Saturday was good enough to
invite us to Thanksgiving proper at her place, and she and her crew did
all the cooking. We had a "Coca-Cola ham" which I thought was great,
mashed potatoes, salad, and all sorts of appetizers, snacks, and
desserts. Everything was awesome. Oh, and the turkey! I'm not normally
a huge turkey fan, but this one was really good! Nice and moist. So,
needless to say, I stuffed myself.
Friday, November 27th
As has been noted numerous times before, the art market doesn't follow
the norms of ordinary retail, so while Black Friday may be the busiest
shopping day of the year, the galleries were totally dead. We did hit
one opening, the Opportunity Shop, in
Hyde Park, and there were some good snacks there. My favorite were the
potstickers in a sweetened soy sauce; there was also sushi, assorted
cheeses, etc. There was wine and apparently some liquor available, but
I confined myself to a Budweiser, thoughtfully placed next to a related
work of art. The box of Bud was next to a video piece in which two men
drank Budweisers tied to balloons; as the cans got lighter, they fell
more and more slowly to the table after each sip, until finally they
floated heavily in the air. After the opening we headed to a friend's
birthday party.
Friday, December 4th
We started at Carl Hammer gallery in River North; we got there a little
before the reception was scheduled to begin, so refreshments hadn't
been served yet. It just looked like Coke and fizzy water, anyway. (I
liked the work, though: Daguerreotypes of snowflakes!)
Next, we caught a bus over to Corbett vs. Dempsey, where we had our
choice of red or white wine. We opted for red, as usual, in our travel
wine glasses for extra classy. Thanks for the wine!
Three Birds, a "gallery" in the back of a retail boutique on Milwaukee,
had a great offering of snacks. I didn't try the weird green punch in
the big jug, but the snacks were excellent. There were black and green
olives, lots of nuts, and assorted cheeses including one with I think
cranberries in it! And was it hummus? Baba ganouj? Something like that!
These guys really know how to set out the snacks! Three Birds Gallery,
you've got the Snack Report Seal of Approval! Thanks for the snacks!
Lastly,
we headed back to our neighborhood on the north side, to Fill
In The Blank. These gallery crawl nights involve a lot of time on the
CTA. On the way down, Steph is usually doing a crossword puzzle (I
help), and on the way home, she's usually asleep on my shoulder.
Fill In The Blank have always got good snacks, and this, plus their
convenient location to us and their late hours, means we usually try to
end our night there whenever they're having an opening. They had some
fancy looking soft drinks, but we opted for wine, again in the travel
glasses. They had some cookies, and cucumber slices, apple slices, and
my favorite, guacamole! The guac was really excellent, and they had two
types of chips with it: regular, and blue!
It got me thinking about all the different types of spreadable,
scoopable, and stackable foods around the world. Mexico has guacamole,
based on the native avocado (or aguacate). The nations of the Middle
East have hummus, based on chickpeas (also called garbanzo beans) and
baba ganouj, based on eggplant. Italy has bruschetta, based mostly on
tomatoes (an American fruit, incidentally). Ceviche, originally from
Peru (or so the Wiki tells me), has spawned variations in other Latin
American countries; it's based on fish. But, when I think of this kind
of food, I always end up thinking of Ethiopia: their entire cuisine, at
least as I've experienced it, consists of piles of delicious glop to be
picked up in a fold of crazy sourdough pancake.
Now, Fill In The Blank, I do have one small suggestion: I noticed that
your apple slices had turned a little brown. Of course, this is just
what apple slices do; it's harmless, and doesn't affect the taste at
all. (I know this because I had several.) However, some people find it
off-putting in terms of presentation, and there is a simple and easy
solution. Some people brush the apple slices with lemon juice, which
prevents the browning but does add a tartness. I don't know that this
is a bad thing, but if it's not desired, you can prevent the browning
without altering the flavor at all, by brushing them with, guess
what...apple juice!
Thanks once again for all the great snacks, Fill In The Blank! You're
almost always the highlight of my snacking experience. I'm glad you're
so close to my house, too; it's the perfect final stop on my way home.
Keep it up!
Saturday, December 5th
Spoke: There were no snacks. There was, however, a very cute puppy. The
puppy had a rawhide chew, which kind of counts as a snack, I guess. I
didn't try it. There was a cooler, which might have had beer in it, but
since we were the first ones there, right as they were opening, I
didn't ask and they didn't offer. The puppy kept drinking the water
that was leaking out of the spigot on the cooler. It was really cute.
It wasn't snacks, though, at least not for us. Strike one!
After leaving Spoke, we had to pee, so we went into Dominick's, where I
bought a big-ass Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha for myself and an
itty-bitty hot cocoa for Steph. Businesses, take note: if you let
people use your bathroom, people sometimes buy stuff while they're in
there.
Johalla: Cash bar!?!? WTF? Seriously, people, I understand that times
are tough, and if you want to run a bar (without a liquor license, I'm
sure) in your gallery space to try to raise some funds, okay, I get
that. But the classy thing to do is to have a bar that suggests
donations for mixed drinks, and then have a bucket of free cans of
cheap beer on the floor in the corner, something like that. Also, there
were no snacks. To be fair, we got there early; they may have loosened
up the booze situation and handed out snacks later on, I don't know.
Also, despite my resentment of the cash bar, I do have to admit that
the work in this show was the best I saw all night. But as far as the
snack report goes, we were 0 for 2.
Happy Collaborationists: We failed. Steph wrote down the wrong address,
so there we were at 1254 N. Milwaukee (instead of 1254 N. Noble, where
we should have been) and found nothing but a wig shop and a vacant lot
full of remarkably geometrically-perfect cubes of ice. I didn't try
any. Sorry we missed you, Happy Collaborationists! I hope you're still
Happy!
MVSEVM: Well, after hitting two places and missing one, we finally
found some goddamned snacks! Muhv-see-vum had some delicious cookies,
plus wine, and cans of beer in the fridge. We'd left our travel cups at
home so we had to make do with disposables. We each had some cookies, a
glass of red, and a beer: I think the beers were Miller High Life, but
I didn't take a note so they could have been something else in a can.
The cookies were nice, soft sugar cookies, some with icing, and I'm
pretty sure they were home-made. They were really good cookies. They
were okay plain but the ones with icing were the best. Thanks for the
snacks, Muhv-see-vum!
Monumentum 2: Man, this place was packed! They were offering up cans of
Old Style, and I think wine. We opted for the Old Style. It was nice.
We got there just in time; the booze ran out shortly after we got ours.
Thanks for the beers, Monumentum 2!
And now, a public service announcement from the Snack Report: Ladies,
if you and two girlfriends go into the bathroom together, and there's a
long-ass line of people waiting to go pee, and the three of you are in
there for like 20 minutes, and then all there of you come out rubbing
at your noses, guess what: everyone knows what you were doing, and it's
rude as shit.
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