Gallery B1E & Gretchen Hasse

Gretchen Hasse "Couple Number 1"

Went to the city yesterday and hung out with Gretchen, my artist/videographer pal who gets involved in a wide range of social causes and lives it what sounds like a really awesome commune. Anyway, her work is hanging in Gallery B1E in Rogers Park.  It was a good space in a juicy location. Here's a link to a video about the gallery and some of it's artists (I'm not real crazy about the interviewer's questions): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBucR1NlQ7U . I don't know that I spent much time (if any) in Rogers Park when I lived in Chicago, but its an interesting and extremely diverse place with what feels like an active arts community.

So I went to see Gretchen and check out her work and the gallery itself. I have one of her pieces posted here, which I picked because I have always loved her figure drawing technique. Here's Gretchen's website, if you want to see more: http://gretchenhasse.com/home.html. Beyond the piece I have here, Gretchen had a good range of stuff on display, including photography and several urban scenes using distressed windows with panes of glass as frames. This gave the impression of looking out the window at a view, which in some of the pieces created an interesting tension between the mundane idea of looking out a window and the collage-like compositions which not always are meant to be a cohesive whole and/or have a clear tie to representation.  It wasn't at all gimmcky, because the color and texture of the window frames made them an organic part of the work. We drank in her work and the work of some of the two other artists on display. One was a painter using a lot more color than Gretchen does and the other was a sculptor. It was good that the work was unrelated, as it provided a broader range of visual experience. 

Then we moved out to have dinner. We found a tiny Persian restaurant with really friendly staff called Masouleh, and we enjoyed a pleasant dinner. We chatted about her video and artwork, I provided some input on her story arc and cells from a comic she is planning, I revealed my efforts on a nascent script for a horror short called 'Revenant', and I shared my experiences learning some new sonatinas on piano.  You know 'girl talk'.

We noticed a restaurant called Den Den just down the street...with Eritrean cuisine! Never had that, though I would suspect it may be similar to Ethiopian given the geography. Definitely need to give that a whirl! There was also a Peruvian restaurant too. I think we'll be back to Rogers Park.