Riding the Blue-Line home from work one evening last May I noticed what appeared to be a piece from the Belgium artist ROA on a building wall near the California stop. I was stunned. At the time I didn’t know of ROA doing any work in the US and my guess was that it was just a copycat. I did some research and stumbled upon an article from FatCap’s website. ROA was not only in town, but he’d done two pieces: the ferrets off the Blue Line and two rams closer to the loop. From the photos the rams looked massive in size and scope. Having never seen ROA’s work in person I spent 45 minutes on Google maps trying to locate the larger piece. In an excited euphoria I visited both pieces that night – unbelievable work and great additions to the Chicago public art scene.
The FatCap article mentioned “our friends over at Pawn Works.” Pawn Works? Who were these guys? I found their website and it all started to make sense. I aimlessly fired off an email to thank them for whatever their involvement was with ROA and expected not to hear anything. They graciously responded and reciprocated my excitement for the project.
Since that initial exchange I’ve continued to become more and more impressed with Pawn Works. In that time they’ve done gallery shows with Gabriel Specter, Clown Soldier, Skewville, Brent Houzenga, James Gallagher, and Teebs as well as facilitated numerous public works across town. They are working hard for the street-art movement and in doing so are making a strong name for themselves.
Recently I had an opportunity to sit down and pick the brains of the Pawn Works team:
Pawn Works Team during the Skewville show
What qualifies something as street art? Is street art more than just unsanctioned art in public spaces? When does it lose its designation as street and become art?
The way we see it, is that street art is on the street. It’s impossible to not notice the work of ‘street-artists’ finding their way into the gallery or a museum for that matter. You’ve heard it all before about the accessibility, the large audience and the free expression etc… It’s easy to define that particular style of work seen in more traditional art settings as street art but it doesn’t always mean it’s literally on the street, which is often the argument. It is derived from that or in many cases it was the starting point for many of the artists known to be leaders in the movement.
It sounds like you’re saying that the categorization of ‘street-art’ will remain much like ‘pop-art’ has remained for that movement. Do I understand you correctly?
Yeah, that sounds about right. It’s another movement many think won’t stick around, except for those who are deeply embedded within it.
Can you talk about the transition of street art into galleries? What had to happen to make it work? Are the egos of street artists any different than the egos of other artists?
It was inevitable, the generations responsible for the start of the movement grew to be some of the same [people] now currently in control of what the public sees at a commercial level. Nothing really had to happen to make it work. Its current commercial success is based around the new generation of marketing and advertising firms. The street work is for the people. The people love it. That gets acknowledged and becomes part of other aspects of pop culture. As in anything, one can be phony to get their message out or one can be sincere. As far as egos go, as in life, you’ve got the humble, the divas and everywhere in-between. It’s all good, it’s all love.
I’ve heard street artists use society’s bombardment of advertising as a ‘license’ to do the same with their art. The approach being: ‘well no one asked me if I wanted to look at a such and such advertisement.’ Do you feel there is a certain irony to advertising agencies and marketing companies jumping on board with the street art movement and specifically as it relates to artists who have ‘altered’ ads at the outset of their artistic careers?
Sure, that’s exactly it. Who decides what we see on the streets? If the poster seen on the street is an ad for a movie or product, is that not the same thing? Someone else is ultimately making the decision of what we see publicly. Why not have those same spaces be used for artistic murals? Have you seen the tampon commercial, I think it was Tampax, with the graffiti girl doing a throw up? So…
Unfortunately or fortunately I haven’t seen the commercial but I understand what you’re saying. Alright, Pawn Works is unique in that you guys are focused on street art. Do you feel that artists are more willing to show with Pawn Works versus other galleries because of that focus?
So that’s the thing… it’s obvious that street art finally has earned an undeniably and more than worthy respectability. We think that street/urban art, or whichever nomenclature you prefer to use, is the major art movement of this era. We have always been immersed in many aspects of the culture in which it encompasses, so it was natural for us to be involved. That interest in our personal lives can clearly be seen within the gallery and most notably through our Sticker Club project. Yet, we don’t consider ourselves a ‘street-art’ gallery. We are a contemporary art gallery that’s rooted in the streets. Many of the artists we work with use their work as a form of social practice and that is often the recurring theme in our programming. With that said, the popularity of street art has directed a lot of focus to us based off of that aspect of our programming both from the public and artists alike.
Through word of mouth, hands down, the best method to know who’s who and who’s on what in this ‘game’, you can find out where people are truly coming from. We make it known that we are here for the artists and do our best to help them in their artistic endeavors while visiting Chicago or with the locals we work with. We are there with them throughout the process when we facilitate. It takes a lot of work and planning to host an out of town artist, and it’s always worth the effort when we all can enjoy the finished works on the streets.
After an artist makes the jump to the gallery scene do you think they can go back to the street? Do they maintain the same respect from the street culture? Or do you think that deep down all street artists would like to get paid to do what they do?
Criticism is everywhere, from the artists to the art buyers to the gallerists; but what’s great is that if you really are trying to create, you can do whatever you want, however you want to do it. Everyone wants to get paid for what they do, especially if they do what they love. The problem for many is the involvement is a job. Fortunately enough, if your head is right, commercial success is secondary and staying busy, conscious of your vision then happiness becomes a way of life.
Talk about what it means to be a gallery showing street art in Chicago versus, say New York or Los Angeles?
The only similarity I see is that you’re on your own here in Chicago, especially when the public work lacks in comparison, collectively anyways. It was important to start local, start within your community whether or not your fan base is stronger somewhere else. Chicago can be tough as people here are more drawn to great projects that already exist elsewhere. It can be very limiting when someone is put off about a new idea because of its lack of current popularity in the ‘big brother’ cities. Fortunately enough for us, as we started to shift our programming at the end of last year with a stronger street art focus we’ve had the pleasure of building a relationship with Rae McGrath and Brooklynite Gallery in Brooklyn, New York. Rae’s undeniable interest and support in the Pawn Works Sticker Club, as well as other endeavors of ours, has given us some tools needed to set a new standard for the way to show work in Chicago. Do what you want, do it yourself and be sincere. No board members, no sponsor, no embedded local alumni; just a clear vision of how you want to be perceived and an awareness that it’s special to be a part of something so real.
I like that: ‘Do what you want, do it yourself and be sincere.’ Okay, so a gallery has a lens that filters out a certain amount of work to create its own vision. Can you describe Pawn Works’ lens? What do you want people to take away?
Our vision is clear to us. We aim for strong, cohesive exhibitions that are equally about getting Chicagoan’s caught up with what’s going on elsewhere within contemporary art as they are about developing up and coming artists. We curate each year around our intimate space, extremely aware of the order of each exhibition and consistently facilitate public art projects that tend to be a bit more spontaneous. If you want something to take away I guess it could be that we are down; down for the artists, down for the artwork. Our lives are completely consumed with what we do. The line is blurred between our personal pleasures and our daily work tasks, we love this shit.
Does their come a time where you say, ‘We’ve done our part to educate; we’re going to turn the dial up a bit.’?
Sorta, we get very hungry after seeing the way some act about street art and gallery exhibitions as a whole. There’s a lot of posing and imitating going on, mostly visibly to us, here in Chicago. We will be continuing to do our thing and be inspired by others for the good and the bad.
Can you share some of the upcoming projects that you guys are working on?
Art Basel Miami Beach is coming up. We won’t be being doing anything quite as involved as the Sugar Junkie; [the collaborative street-art mobile home with Brooklynite Gallery from 2010] but we’ll no doubt have a presence. Armed with sticker packs we’ll be covering aspects of the events for a few online publications with some special features planned.
We’ve got a lot of great new sticker images coming to the club this winter, artists designed sticker machine drops and an exciting window installation here in Chicago we’ve had planned for a while. Planning our shows for next year is well underway and we also look forward to some really exciting new projects with more of a focus on arts education; working with the kids. We will be updating our online presence during this winter and beginning to work on a collaborative project with you, The Joneses.
Staying busy - I dig it. Thanks for your time guys. Have a good trip to Miami.
Pawn Works is located at 1050 North Damen Ave. For more information please visit their website at www.pawnworkschicago.com
