Michael Workman

It's hard not to like Oli Watt's art. My first art purchase was a dollar bill of his that he'd left on a railroad track for a train to flatten. A dollar bill, instead of a penny, to adjust for inflation. That sorely crumpled dollar bill, floating in a box frame, has hung on my wall for years now, a meek reminder of the half-life of ideas. No surprise, then, that "Covers," Watt's current exhibit at Wicker Park's Booster and Seven, similarly satisfies.

This time Watt has produced a collection of works that mimic their real world sources. Chief among these are a series of "Do Not Park" city street signs, in various grades of orange, that evoke the passage of time in their sun-faded surfaces. "This series probably exists out there somewhere," says Watt. Matter of fact, most of this show does exist out there somewhere, including "Copy Bag," his Kinko's copy-store bag, "Wrapper 1 and 2," a pair of McDonald's burger wrappers, "Old Style," a series of Old Style six-pack carriers or "True Value," a single little brown-paper key bag from the hardware store of its namesake. There's even a duplicate "Degree," though whether it's the artist's and from what institution is unclear, since the text of the diploma has been distorted beyond comprehension. Nearly every piece in the show is an assembled screen-print, with woodcuts, on Morika and Honen papers. They're all subtly off-kilter, as if hand-traced, and shifting the perception of these "remnants" as the detritus of mass-production to reproductions that treat consumer culture with a sly sense of humor. Everything has been taken from paper products which Watt views as a "trail of printed matter and objects that document daily experiences." Whose experiences exactly? If not the artist's, then those who these product packages serve as the ceremonial moment of point-of-purchase, of sociological validation for one's ability to purchase things, from the lowest to the highest. Distinct from Watt's printed works is his "Prairie Vision," a pair of "found sunglass lenses" in black frames fixed with epoxy. Painted in the colors of a stained glass window, the lenses are those worn by a devotee of Watt's throwaway world, one shifted a single degree toward a more humanized vision of a life defined by what's left behind.

Nova Year Two

Regular readers of this column will recall that, besides art editor for Newcity, I'm also the director of a local not-for-profit outfit called Bridge. Every year in late April, Bridge stages an emerging and contemporary art show called the Nova Art Fair, this year taking place at the City Suites Hotel in the Lakeview neighborhood. In the next few weeks, my staff and I will be relocating to the City Suites to start preparing for this massive show (last year we saw 8,000 visitors), with each of the rooms in the hotel transformed into an exhibition space for the forty galleries coming to Chicago for a single weekend, April 27-30. I'll be writing about my experience as the organizer of the show, about the people, events and art that readers have access to, but also the trials and tribulations that happen behind the scenes. Check out the lineup of galleries and special programs we have planned online at www.novaartfair.com, including a day of film screenings at the Landmark Century Cinemas, a fashion show aboard four cars of a CTA train we've rented to pick up passengers at the Belmont station, and installations at more than a dozen area businesses and around the neighborhood. Hope to see you there!

Oli Watt shows at Booster and Seven, 1048 North Marshfield, (312)375-0792, through April 23.

(2006-04-11)

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