Featured Artist of the Month: Max King Cap

August is upon us. It is a month full of preparation, bustle and enterprise. It is also time for the featured artist. Not only am I a fan of his work, but a former student. Max King Cap was my drawing instructor at Columbia College and he is also the first real drawing instructor I ever had. The incredible talent he reserved was translated into reassuring and direct instruction. His standards were incredibly high and he was very rigid, but many art students don't know how much they need discipline. I went to see his work at the former Oscar Fridel gallery on Orleans street back in the day. I was blown away. He did more with a brown paper bag and jumping jacks than some people do with a studio full of canvas. I also saw a piece in the former president of Columbia's office and then I knew what was up. He had been able to master form and function and design and then easily move on to conceptual and objective art in the manner of Picasso and other greats. I really started paying attention after that. He had this practice of us ripping up our best work after class and keeping the room cleaner than we found it. These types of habits instill so much substance and character into artists. Those lessons lasted far past that semester. My friend Dustin Harris and I compared notes from his classes for hours years later. Even now I can hear quotes and phrases he uttered back in 1995 that strike a chord while I'm painting. I ran into him while installing my own show at Columbia and he invited me to his show at the Hyde Park Art Center, where he preceded to blow my mind again.
Just when I thought I was ready for him he had completely changed his style again! Remarkable. Not just slight, but a new advention of his own being. Here are some questions and answers by one of the greats.


QJ-How did teaching at Columbia College Chicago enhance your art perception if it did at all?

MK-
Teaching, in general, is a wonderful experience as it has helped me articulate my own ideas about art, forced me to understand and accept various points of view and incorporate those concerns into my own work, and kept me vigilant in my search for novel and informative works and methods that i could share with my students. The biggest influence, however, was not teaching at Columbia but the Illinois Institute of Technology where i taught drawing in the department of Architecture and Urban Planning. There I met designers and makers of objects and structures that had very different considerations than that of "pure" art. Their influence gave my work a theatricality and grandeur that continues to this day.

Here is a tid bit of history:

Former Tenured Professor of Art & Design
15 years full-time college teaching experience
8 years Coordinator of Drawing & Painting
MFA from the University of Chicago
Awards from Creative Capitol and Artadia Foundations
Exhibited in Munich, Vienna, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York

Please visit MaxKingCap.com for more:



QJ- When did the rest of the world begin to take notice of your talent and/or skill?

MK-
I can't remember when. it has grow slowly, then sometimes disappeared. A career ebbs and flows and sometimes one feels anguished by the lack of success and wants to quit. Then other times when one is successful one is locked into a pattern that soon becomes too confining. Taking one's measure from public opinion (or lack of it) is an inefficient strategy.


QJ- How often do you destroy your own work if you do?

MK-
I recycle work. If i paint over an old painting the original is never truly lost, it becomes under-painting that increases the patina of time and labor and gives me a chance to correct my own work. The old painting is then a sketchbook page or incomplete idea that i finish once I have new information. With the 3D work I make use of the parts. I have a work called SOB, which stands for stack of bibles. The bibles, all stolen from hotels, stack up to my height. It becomes a tower of my guilt and infidelity. I plan to make it into another work with the same theme but more effectively realized. The bibles will be shredded and used to stuff pillows and be presented with chocolates upon them. Thus the notion of guilty slumber and the fruit of knowledge (of one's own wrongdoing) is both more clear and more subtle.


QJ-Who bought your favorite piece?

MK-One can't control who buys one's work. Vulgarians have a surprising amount of money and if i worried about the character of the buyer i'd never sell anything.

QJ- When and if you gave your art away; what was the reason and to whom?

MK-
I make trades with other artists first. it is a way of showing respect for artists whom you admire and of building a collection of your own. i do give to benefit auctions for causes that concern me, aids hospices, genocide in Darfur, etc. Until the tax law is changed artists can only benefit from donating the cost of the materials that went into making the work. Two friends may trade and then reap the tax benefit from the full value of the donated works.

QJ-What inspired you to explore beyond canvas?

MK-
An overheard conversation that could not be expressed in paint. I made a box with slits in it that forced the viewer to press their ear against the box in order to read the text.

QJ-Do you take hiatus?

MK-
I often switch media to clear my head of the problems encountered in another medium. Fortunately, there are several different media in which I find satisfaction.

QJ- How do you respond the statement that 'Painting is a dead art'?

MK-
Many people have gone to there graves pronouncing painting dead. Painting will change, revert, and progress again but painting will never die as long as walls are flat.

QJ- If you could open a museum, would you hang your own work in it?

MK-

Absolutely not. I already have a shrine to my work in my head. My museum would be full of my favorites artists, Forrest Bess, Philip Guston, Stuart Davis, Henri Matisse, Lucas Cranach, Dierk Bouts, and many others. I would go there to learn their lessons again and again.

Flat Iron Building

This place is a Wicker Park Land Mark. It is right on the Six Corners. I believe this artist is Reggie. I should get his last name, but I know he is a good drummer. I catch him a lot at sub-T's open mic Monday jamming out. He used too roller skate topless in daisy dukes up and down Damen every summer with head phones on, but he's really slowed down from that. I guess he's putting more energy into painting.

All about the trees...

I am ashamed to say I have forgotten this artist's name. Not only have I seen his work on PBS/WTW, but I have met him and he was the nicest guy. His work was commissioned and bought by O'Hare Airports International Terminal. His house is a block away from me too. He is very European too. I am gonna have to ring his bell so I can write a better piece, but he's a busy dude. I should interview my friend Dean, who works for him. But for now, take a look at this.

Industry Art

Amidst the industrial court south of Wicker Park lies a hidden scuplture garden. It's not open to the public and is unadvertised. It's more of a grave yard, but it's the amazing. I snuck in because that is what I do for you.

Nutri-Art

I keep finding more of this food inspired art. Sometimes it seems casts a shadow over society so wasteful we turn sustinence into aestetics. From another vantage point it looks as if we are so creative we turn everything into stimuli. At any rate this stuff is well done.

Vicinity Pics: Logan Square subway entrance/Wicker Park/Chicago

Chicago is eye candy-

Vicinity Pics: Wicker Park/Chicago

Chicago is booming with street art. As soon as some comes down;more goes up. I have begun to develop many opinions about it. I can begin to understand that some of this at may offend people. If art can not be objective should it be in the view of the public?

Some street artists use public property as their vessels/canvas/modules/medium to send a message and perhaps not to inconvinience small business, but many artists are posting over street signs and advertising which can cause problems.
Some art gives me the heevie jeevies which are akin to goose bumps and cousin to kudees. Should I be subjected to kudees any given moment?

On the flip side, the city never asked me if I liked the color they paint my stop lights, garbage tanks, and such. The city has many public places that are falling apart, but they focus the revenue on other tasks. The city should be beautifing the city at a faster rate than they are collecting revenue on many a project. The city should also take into consideration that art has existed prior to the city itself and must be created and seen by the public in order for a complete cycle of communication to circulate in contemporary society.

If the government and local municipalities are not going to hire artists to customize the droll and bland city scapes they should understand that blank space is simply a canvas to some people. It has always been that way and will always be.

Now who should decide what art is going to represent the taste of millions? This is where art goes commercial and begins to in fact represent a downward spiral of society in some regards. To commission artists is also a slippery slope. That is the equivalent to muzack and that was/is bad for everyone. (Even musicians.)

With this said I present some new pics from Chicago in July. The best time to be in the Windy City hands down. Everything blooms in Chicago's July. This is the golden months. There are more events and happenings in a Chicago summer than you can shake a stick at. I've managed to make it to a few, but needless to say that means I've missed dozens. That is the gift and the curse of being an artist in Chicago. It can consume you to try and keep up with the other 3.2 million artists.