Free Fries

This piece was inspired by a trip to the industrial west side. It originally was a home to late 19th century and early 20th century light industry. Today, some of it is abandoned, but most of it is being reused by early 21st century small business, industry and art. There are some great factories and warehouses that will find there way into future paintings. This one, however is a lone 3-flat. There are a few old apartment buildings and new ones being built on some of the vacant lots. It’s really inspiring, because it seems that the each company is going about its business quietly, including the artists. Despite the machinery and trucks, it’s a peaceful place. I could see having a studio down there at some point.

Red Cab

This is a red Ford pick-up from the eighties. It has a bunch of junk in the back, so it must belong to a scavenger.

Scrap metal collectors ply the alleys and streets of Chicago. They stack all sorts of cumbersome bulk garbage in the beds of their dilapidated pick-up trucks.


It’s really amazing how well they can pile up the refuse. No matter how precarious their loads become, I have never seen one spill into the street. These guys know what they are doing. Perhaps they should hold some sort of competition.

While somewhat unsightly, they seem to have become a part of the urban fabric of the last 5 years or so. They do provide a good service.

Blue Caprice

The urban landscape is dotted with old Caprice Classics. Many of them are used taxi cabs. Some are used squad cars. What is odd is that most are the square-top variety that were built from 1977 — 1990. The bathtub Caprices from ’91 — ’96 are pretty scarce. Whether this car is used by a cab driver as his personal ride or a getaway car by a stickup crew, I don’t know. What I do know is that these cars are known the world over as something that can last a million miles. Until the Gulf War, these were popular in Iraq. I believe an entire plant shut down as the war started as most of its production was to supply the Persian Gulf region with Chevys.


I once had the pleasure of touring the factory that stamped out the quarter panels for these machines. It took seven presses to create them. I don’t remember how heavy each one was, but they extended two floors below the room and dropped their die from two floors up. Whole railroad cars were down below to catch the scrap.

Cordoba

The car is a 1980s Chrysler Cordoba. The bar’s sign is the Cordoba’s crest and can be found in the hood ornament and other details. I don’t know if the Mayan-looking bird was based on anything real or if an artist at Chrysler cooked it up. This car is associated with “fine Corinthian leather,” a meaningless term that a copywriter invented, so anything is possible. A Google search turned up nothing on the matter.

Bittersweet Mist

This is part of a series of paintings based on 1970s car colors. The featured color is Bittersweet Mist, a burnt orange that was sprayed onto some Buicks in 1971. In this case, it is a Skylark that is ironically in front of the Skylark Lounge, a cool old bar at Cermak and Halsted on Chicago’s South Side.

Unfortunately it is in an area that is poised to get swallowed up by the gentrification that is starting to infect the city south of the Loop. In fact, not only has the Maxwell Street neighborhood to the North, been overly gentrified, but the old place was completely leveled. There are new suburban psuedo-downtowns that have more of an urban feel than what you would find at University PlaceTM, just a mile or so to the north of the Skylark.

Wild Plum

The car is a 1972 Javelin. The color is “Wild Plum.” The building is based on an abandoned structure somewhere west of McCormick place. It looks out of place because all of the other buildings around it were torn down during the urban removal of the ’60s. That’s how the area appears anyway, with a lot of vacant lots and a few scattered high-density apartment buildings ca. 1965.

Not Much Happening In this Space

All of my blogs on art can be found at NeotericArt.com. Therefore, updates to this one will be infrequent.  I will, however, chime in here once in a while with non-art related thoughts.