Andy Seifert

For most Chicagoans, the El's dirty steel trains are just a screeching, annoying necessity of life; for an artist, it's another canvas. Some choose to draw graffiti, others like to spray fake blood all over them and write "Real Patriots take Public Transit" and "Storm the Castle!" in the windows—just like the one currently hanging inside A.Okay Official's modest gallery. Unfortunately, this conceptual train isn't life-sized (yet), but in model-sized, two-foot long form and hanging alongside thirty-five other train art creations, at least twelve of which are more peculiar and eyebrow-raising than this bloody, castle-storming artifact.

The interior of the gallery on this night could appropriately pass as the inside of an El during rush hour, as myriad young adults are willing to stand uncomfortably shoulder-to-shoulder to inspect the model trains. Also similar to the El, there's plenty of alcohol here. Following along the floor, which has been painted to mirror the familiar CTA-issued train route map, people walk the Red Line from Sheridan to 47th to behold a model called "The Take Over" one half inhabited by eyeball organisms and the other half sprouting assault rifles.

A drawn-in rider proudly moons any onlookers from the latter half, presumably pissing off the eyeball people. A train titled "Charon" creepily sits on its own table, its sides severely damaged to reveal the tortured souls inside, skeleton-like demons that closely resemble Iron Maiden's beloved mascot Eddie.

Two Bohemian-looking hipsters study a train with a cartoonish depiction of Garden of Eden painted on it when one of them accidentally touches Eve's bare breasts, tilting the train thirty degrees. "Dude, it's crooked," the heavily bearded hipster says, as his companion carefully levels the train with extreme caution. "It was great, but you messed it up." A model train on its own embodies geekiness, but a model train with naked Biblical characters on it? That is hipster approved.

(2008-02-19)

Also by Andy Seifert

Painful Reality
A taxi screeches to a halt on Clark Street in front of Goose Island Wrigleyville, where a patient crowd of teenagers and twentysomethings are lined up. Out steps a gentlemen in his early twenties who wears faded jeans, Armani sunglasses and what appears to be Derek Zoolander's "blue steel" pose. The sad reality is that he is strutting towards the line to audition for the twenty-first season of MTV's "The Real World," and he probably has a decent chance at making the cut
(2008-02-12)

The Gates of Hell
If campaign rallies are any indication, John Mellencamp is the most popular musician of our time. Virtually every presidential campaign uses the pro-America, pro-common-sense values embedded within the prose of "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A," and Republican frontrunner John McCain is no exception
(2008-02-06)

Bono Appetit
"Hola!" Bono yells, gyrating his twelve-foot wide crotch into each and every member of the audience. "I'm at a place called vertigo!" Normally, the sight of a gargantuan, six-story-high Bono would frighten masses into an apocalyptic frenzy, but not this time. Inside the Navy Pier IMAX theater, Bono is a friendly giant, a scruffy Irishman whose beard you can almost touch in the new "U2-3D" movie
(2008-01-29)

As Fast As You Can
It's supposedly twenty-eight degrees but it feels ten times more bitter when the crowd gathering around the Quadrangle at the University of Chicago spots the nudes, a flesh-colored train of runners furiously chugging along with no respect to frostbite or hypothermia
(2008-01-22)

Smoked Out
(2007-12-26)

It's All in the Surname
(2007-12-04)

Bear Barren
(2007-11-27)

Rebel Cacophony
(2007-11-19)

Martha Martha Martha
(2007-11-19)

Take It Personal
(2007-11-06)

Tip of the Week
(2007-10-30)

The Scary Stage
(2007-10-23)

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