Sheesh

So it’s been almost 10 months since I realized I had this page.

All is well in edmar land. Ruby Dean is walking and jabbering. She is the smartest and most beautiful baby on earth! Yes it’s true, even thought she is my baby… It’s been a pretty eye opening and fantastic experience being a father. Watching Ruby grow has made the world a better place, made me feel more in tune with what is important in life and also make me want to eat sleep and play games more. I am a very lucky man.

Maria’s has also been a fantastic experience. Meeting newneighbors and creating new relationships with people I normally would not come across in my old life has been an enriching as well. I have me a bunch of locals somewhat recently transplanted here and together we restarted the Bridgeport International, a community newsletter. We have done two issues and it seems we will rock them out every two month or so.  Maria’s is a true community bar. It has been succesful in ways i have never imagined.

The Lumpen 20th anniversary issue will be coming out soon. Looking through 20 years of Lumpens has made me realize that we actually made a fucking awesome magazine.. It truly rocks. I forget sometimes.. Sadly, Proximity has been long suffering and no longer come out 3 times a year. It  is also slated to be released soon. Freimuth is doing a total redesign and i will change the publications into a different concept each time it comes out.

This month we will work on our new Art fair concept the MDW Fair, release 3 publications and next month i hope to create the directory for SMAll: Small Manufacturers Alliance. Then there is a Craft Beer Illinois Book/mag, a focus on mapping available commercial properties in bridgeort and a host of new endeavors like our microbrewery, the  Bridgepork festival and some other secret stuff.

See u in ten months blog.

 

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Fragile, Like a Baby in Your Arms

My baby Ruby is almost 6 months old. She has completely changed the way I view the planet. Which in some ways makes me feel more selfish for our own well being as a family unit, but less selfish about my own interests. I care more about what will happen for her than for what interests me so I am becoming more  intentionally committed to making the hood better place for her to grow up in. Which  means I have to figure out concrete and lasting ways to make this neighborhood rock. I am going to leave this pocket of alt culture world that we have created to embrace a wider community civic engagement phase of my life. I feel like a parent.
Since September way too much has transpired: Lumpen 115, Proximity 008, Select Media Festival, bunch of art shows, Co-Prosperity School; Three months of running and programming Maria’s and  it feels like  two years have gone by. My arm/shoulder is killing me every day. I sleep poorly. I am a little overworked, and realize i am going to have to trim the fat. Which means I am  gonna drop one issue a year of Proximity, so that it comes out biannually. Am also trying not to work at the bar during the day so I can chill more with the family. I now know firsthand that owning/running a bar is a time consuming and delicate balancing act and  have a lot of empathy for restaurant/bar owners everywhere.  Despite the suckiness of running a business and the resulting mental and physical pain, I am  proud of the fact that we made an incredibly awesome little neighborhood joint. I work with great people: my family and friends. We are trying hard to make the bar a nice community joint for non douchebags and we have succeeded on making it a place that we want to hang at.
I owe massive thanks to everyone that has collaborated and helped us get through the past 6  months of frantic and hectic work production and craziness. Thank u guys..
Ahead:
Going to revive the Easy Listener and make greater plans for 2011. It includes a giant art fair for alt spaces for Version>011 in late April and a possible commercial off-space fair during art Chicago. A new Lumpen is due in January, a new Art Guide Chicago and a new Proximity in April, a food festival is being planned in Bridgeport and the massive Re-imagining Bridgeport neighborhood community project  will be created. The new year will also find us  brewing beers and I have a goal of releasing a Lumpen Proletariat IPA to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the magazine. God I am old.
Someone bring me some Ritalin. Or please massage my shoulders when u see me.

 

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Getting on Track

Update: Maria’s is doing well, a new issue of Lumpen is out, an awesome show at C-PS by Tom Torluemke, and an incredible pronouncement of support by Paul Klein makes the recent past sort of lovely. Best of these past weeks is that Baby Ruby is a giggly droolsy litle chubbo wubbo. She makes this world better.

On to figuring out how to pay for Proximity Issue 008. Then producing an epic D and D weekend retreat, a proximity release show, lumpen release show, Halloween art party and Select Media Festival 9: Infoporn 2.. See what happens later…

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Life is all baby and bar

There was no real summer except for a week in South Carolina. Spent countless 12 hour plus days to reopen the family bar newly christened Maria’s Packaged Goods & Community Bar. It’s working out and it’s changed my day to day world radically. Ruby Dean is getting bigger and bigger. She is the sweetest most amazing being this earth will ever know. The people’s baby has been perfect counterpart to the horrors of running a family business.

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babymar

Ruby Dean Marszewski was born at 2:47pm on June 20, 20, Fathers Day.
She weighed 8lb 15 oz ad was 21.5 inches tall.

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It’s just about remembering

Perhaps Februaries are supposed to go by fast. For some reason, at short notice,  we decided to open up a new space in the Loop which we have dubbed the (Con)Temporary Art Space. It is conceptually a franchise of the Public Media Institute’s activities located in a former Ritz camera shop in downtown Chicago. It’s rad. The neighborhood  experience downtown is so vastly different than the B-port life..  The new space was provided by Pop Up Art Loop, a newish pop-up art gallery project put together by the Chicago Loop Alliance.  We are pretty excited about the project working with some long time collaborators and several new interns that have appeared for the Spring Semester at SAIC. It has become a nice site for research , work and interaction with the public. We had our inaugural opening last week. Rachael and I both put work in the show. Some images of the space are here. the Space will have weekly Thursday evening openings.

Late last January I launched the Bridgeport International newsletter that I had been thinking about for awhile. It came out before the primary elections and included a handy palm card for voters as well as a guide to restaurants in the hood. Someone who writes for the New York Times got a copy. And they wrote a blurb about it in yesterday’s paper. Weird. Of all the things to write about..

I performed with the Members Only  this past Thursdat, too. We now have a set of marvelous dancers (Colin and Chase) who totally make the band an experience to behold.. I will hopefully post some images about them. We played the Bottle. had a good time afterwards with Conor, the publisher of The Baffler and Jennifer Norback, hot downtown Art Dealer.

As this becomes a diary of sorts I want to remember that February was also the month of the Auto Show. Brutal midnight shifts and 16 hour days should not be forgotten! It’s like I won the lotto because so many people were trying to get the job. I was very very lucky to have worked on this show and I owe Miles (the guy who hired me)  a bottle of whatever he likes to drink. The money I earned is paying for babystuff and diapers and our new Midwife and baby helpers… Woo hoo!

Speaking of babies. My baby mama is the hottest most beautiful woman in the world. Each day I see Rachael and her growing baby bump, it fills me with a primordial caveman-like pride. I am an extremely lucky man to be wed to such a lovely woman. I am super happy to be a dad soon.

In the near future.. Rachael and I are gearing up for Version 10 and we are taking a trip to Rotterdam for a Proximity tour of sorts this March 5.. This will be our holiday before the next storm of activities.

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remembering the last month.

The beautiful people from the Tupajumi Foundation rocked our space last month. Here is a video overview of the show.
Just put out the BI with Reuben. Download a copy from the site.
My wife Rachael has started a blog! And its got updates on our developing  baby!
Lumpen issue 114 will be released soon.
The (Con)Temporary Art Space project is about to begin.

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Quitting Smoking

December flew by. The Trendbeheer Meets Proximity  (Encounter 4) exhibition featured fantastic work. It was a tough weekend to get people to come out to an art show, but a lot of peeps made it. It was a classic suitcase show that lasted for two days. Joe Kisser (aka Jeroen Kuster) really nailed his performance the first night. Niels Post curated a great video program from the Rotterdam VHS film festival. Rachael and I had lots of fun running all over town with Niels, Charlotte, Jeoren, and Petra. One day brought them to the heart of American Consumption: Walmart just so they can see America in Action.

Somehow during this busy period I performed as part of Quimby’s Cabinet of Curiosities program at the MCA with my band Members Only. It was an “un-lecture” series that the MCA does on Tuesdays. It is hard to perform in the Puck’s cafe when everyone is siting down, but i think we kicked some butt. For the performance I covered, that is, read, a statement calling for the resignation of the board members from the MCA. It was a nice jaw dropper. Influenced by the Temp Serives Art Work project, I took a Guerrilla Art Action Group document from the book Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam Era that condemned MOMA and Rockefeller and changed the words Museum of Modern Art (in NYC) to Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. After reading it we performed Compulsion by Martin L Gore. After that I read another detourned GAAG statement calling all artists, architects, musicians, dancers, etc etc to assemble at the MCA on May 1, 2010 in order to enforce our demands!   Then we broke into Question of Lust by Depeche Mode. A hundred found images from the web cycled through showing creative resistance art, utopian architecture and images from the Movement. I think its safe to declare that Members Only is  an 80′s tribute performance group covering new wave romantic music and radical texts and manifestos from the 60s and 70s. This combination of interests work very well together. Niels Post took a nice vid from his camera and posted it. I wish he recorded the  reading!

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December stuff

Issue number 006 of Proximity magazine is out the door. We took our time and made sure it will be prefect. hahaha. Freimuth found a great cover image by SOFTlab. Pictured above.

I think we did a good job. It is probably my most favorite issue to date. We shall see. Must start working on issue 007 immediately. There is way too much to plan for the next year. Version will eat everything.  The new campaign for VERS10N is designed by Gregory Calvert.

Blog note: Remember to put this in a press kit for my personal file.  In a recent Art Letter Paul Klein wrote   “Ed Marszewski (Edmar) is the most innovative, conscientious art impresario and provocateur I know.” I have to give Paul a hug.

One more thing. Members Only has a gig at the MCA’s Cabinet of Curiosities thing curated by Liz from Quimbys.

Oh one more one more thing. A gang of Dutch artists are arriving this weekend! Woo Hoo!

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It feels real good

Just wanted to note that installing this year’s select media festival show, Super Bad Ass has been a bunch of hard work. And for some reason I think this is one of the better shows I have ever put together. Maybe I am getting good at this. Or maybe it’s because everyone involved has totally thrown down. I am also super thrilled to have met James Quigley aka Gunsho. The dude is a soul brother.

Of course the festival  happens at the same time we need to finish the next issue of Proximity. I think we are all either sick, rushed, super busy and harried. I hope we don’t lose that feeling  and that it shapes up as good as it reads.

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