Board of Directors

Elizabeth Burke-Dain

Since founding the citywide arts festival Around the Coyote in the 90s, Elizabeth Burke-Dain has transformed and elevated some of Chicago’s most celebrated cultural brands such as Poetry Foundation & POETRY magazine, the Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia College Chicago’s gallery programs, the Garfield Park Conservatory, and many more. She is an influencer and specialist in taking organizations and individuals to the next level with strategic and targeted messaging and by engaging distinguished branding and design agencies such as Pentagram Design and Michael Bierut. Burke-Dain has a proven track record of reinvigorating mission-based organizations with innovative programming, media partnerships, advertising campaigns, communications planning, and creative content development that successfully resonates with potential audiences. 

Website:

www.instagram.com/eburkedain/

Browne Goodwin

Board of Directors

Browne Goodwin began collecting art in the 1970s, and has been a champion of emerging artists across the country, specifically in Texas, LA, and Chicago.

Bert Green

Vice President, Board of Directors

Bert Green is the director of Bert Green Fine Art gallery in Chicago. He has lived in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Bert Green Fine Art focuses on fine art marketing, sales and curation, with an emphasis on art’s role, impact and interaction with trends in urban economic development and revitalization, technology and culture. The gallery represents and exhibits emerging and mid-career artists, and works with specialty print houses to produce unusual and rare limited edition lithographs, letterpress, and photographic prints.

Ryan LaFollette

Ryan LaFollette’s background is in non-profit administration and urban affairs. He has previously worked for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency. Currently, LaFollette is the Assistant Director of the American Library Association. With a steadfast appreciation for art, LaFollette has long been a supporter and collector. His collection includes many prints by artists from Spudnik Press.

Bianca Marks

President, Board of Directors

Bianca is founder of Marks on Canvas, a Chicago-based boutique agency that specializes in strategic creative content, marketing media, project management and public relations for clients engaged in the arts, including: visual artists, galleries, art fairs, organizations and creative spaces. She’s an arts enthusiast with 12+ years of proven expertise driving brand awareness through compelling campaigns and multi-channel communications that integrate social media, content creation, public relations material, advertising, media, and team collaboration.

Notable clients include visual artist Amanda Williams. She’s collaborated on projects with art institutions and publications including: The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Arts Club Chicago, EXPO Chicago, Monique Meloche gallery, The Chicago Tribune and Chicago Magazine. She is a guest speaker for the 2017-2018 FIELD/WORK Residency at Chicago Artists Coalition on the subject of Marketing Strategies for Artists, the 2018 US Pavilion Venice Biennale Communications and PR liaison to Amanda Williams and Andres Hernandez and President of the Board of Directors for Chicago-based arts organization, Spudnik Press Cooperative. She resides in Chicago, IL.

Website:

www.marksoncanvas.com/

Dutes Miller

Board of Directors

Dutes Miller’s collages, artists books and phallic sculptures examine the spaces where the artist’s inner life, queer subcultures and mass media intersect. Miller appropriates images from pornographic websites, magazines and his own imaginings to investigate alternative standards of beauty, visualizations of lust and desire found on the internet, and power dynamics in sexual relationships. Michelle Grabner wrote in ArtForum, “Miller’s mixed-media collages on paper incorporating penis figures striking silly states of repose and activity are enjoyable vignettes, demonstrating nimble material interplay.”

Miller’s work is driven by an investigation of queer male sexuality through a tactile exploration of materials, most often plaster, resin and paint and also including fabric, feathers, horns and other found objects. From a conceptual standpoint, he is interested in the notion of an object that is penetrable (orifice) versus one which penetrates (phallus). Appearing to be in states of transition, his sculptures attempt to find the potential conflation of the two.

Dutes Miller’s work has been written about on artforum.com, Hyperallergic, the Huffington Post, the Chicago Reader, Time Out Chicago, New City, and the Chicago Tribune. Miller’s work has been included in exhibitions at several national venues including White Flag Projects in St. Louis and the Ukrainian Museum of Art in Chicago. His collaborative work with his husband Stan Shellabarger, as Miller & Shellabarger, won a 2008 Artadia Award and a 2007 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation award and has been written about in Art in America, Artforum.com, Art & Auction, Frieze, Artnet, The Art Newspaper, Flash Art, and the Chicago Tribune. Miller received a BFA from Illinois State University. He is represented by Western Exhibitions in Chicago and lives and works in Chicago.

He has long been involved with Spudnik Press as an artist in residence, member, and more recently, serving on the Board of Directors.

Services Offered:

  • Illustration

Website:

westernexhibitions.com/artist/dutes-miller/

Residency Period:

Sep 2008–Nov 2008

Project Statement:

Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger’s first collaborative show occurred at Western Exhibitions in the Spring of 2007 and was reviewed in TimeOut Chicago and the Chicago Sun-Times. The Chicago-based couple has been creating collaborative works since they starting dating years ago, this work creates a distinct body of work separate from their individual studio practices. Miller’s personal work is often paintings or collages with themes of hardcore gay, hyper masculine, body-centric images, rather than focusing on partnerships and domestic.

Classes by this Artist:

Introduction to Paper Marbling
Paper Marbling Workshop
Decorative Paper: Suminagashi, Paste Papers, & Paper Marbling
Techniques in Monoprinting

Products by this Artist:

Aron Packer

Board of Directors

Starting in the late 80’s as an American folk art dealer, Aron Packer built his early career focusing on outsider and self taught artists. Also exhibiting unusual objects such as sideshow banners, tattoo drawings, and wild looking magic tricks, his early venue was an apartment gallery, and he became known for a broad yet unusual vision. He added contemporary art and established his first public gallery in 1992 in Wicker Park, joining an alternative gallery scene that included Beret International, Ten in One, and Oscar Friedl Gallery. As business forces changed over the past 25+ years, Packer migrated to locations in River North and the West Loop, continuing to expand his notable group of artists. In 2015 he closed Packer Schopf Gallery on West Lake Street after nearly a decade of ambitious shows. Currently Aron Packer Projects has a permanent pop-up space in the offices of the Chicago Gallery News through 2018 which is open 5 days a week. The Gallery lives on!

Website:

www.packergallery.com/