Artisans
The Artisans series spotlights unique and talented artists from the greater Chicago area and beyond.
Chicago Artisan:
Eric Edward Esper
Eric Edward Esper’s paintings are a disaster—and that’s what makes them captivating.
Imagine the scene of the Shirtwaist Triangle Factory in Manhattan, New York, in 1911 with the top three floors of 10 engulfed in flame, and where 148 laborers died because the sweatshop owners kept the exit doors locked.
Or the crash of American Airlines Flight 191 near O’Hare International Airport in 1979 just seconds after takeoff, ending the lives of all 271 aboard.
Chicago artist Eric Edward Esper not only imagines these and other horrific tragedies in American history, but he paints them from a bird’s eye view in meticulous detail, somber hues and a retro illustrative style.
He calls them his “disaster paintings.” “These events that irrevocably altered so many lives are important to remember, primarily to memorialize the people lost and how it affected our society, and also to remind us that disaster can occur at any time, anywhere,” he writes on his website, ericesper.com.
Esper first revealed his artistic talents as a child growing up in the Detroit suburbs. His mother, an art teacher, taught him his first lessons, and he excelled in art classes through high school. He graduated from Northern Michigan University in Marquette on the Upper Peninsula in 1995 with a bachelor of fine arts degree in illustration.
He then moved to Chicago, hoping for a career in graphic arts, but job opportunities were sparse. Undaunted, he washed dishes for a couple of years before being hired as a framer at a vintage poster gallery. The position expanded to installations, and then to restoration and conservation. He stayed for 10 years before joining the since-closed Linda Warren Gallery and Linda Warren Projects as an art handler.
Esper continued to paint, mostly still lifes, landscapes and cityscapes. He exhibited in local shows, he sold some pieces, and Warren was representing his work. Yet he yearned to create art more meaningful than a pretty picture.
“Landscape paintings don’t get remembered as well as where something else goes on,” he says.
For inspiration, he drew upon his keen interest in history, often tragic and sometimes forgotten events that took enormous human toll. His first disaster paintings were locations where self-proclaimed messianic leaders and their followers lived and prac-ticed their beliefs before they died or were imprisoned. The collection he calls “Cult Temples” include the site where the Charles Manson family lived in California and the Peoples Temple in Jonestown, Guyana.
“The cult stories terrified me, and I want-ed to portray the scene where people were looking for sanctuary and found something quite different,” he says.
After the cult series, Esper painted the S.S. Eastland passenger ship that capsized in the Chicago River in 1915. His portfolio grew to depict fires, shipwrecks, crashes and weather scourges that occurred in Chicago and beyond: Our Lady of Angels school fire in 1958; American Airlines Flight 191 crash in 1979; and the train trestle collapse near Ashtabula, Ohio, in 1876. In a sense, they are still landscapes.
In 2013, Warren mounted a solo exhibition of his disaster paintings titled “Chicago Catastrophes, Conflagrations and Calamities.” Esper had found his niche.
“His paintings are just fascinating,” Warren says. “Obviously, they are dark and, in many cases, morbid, but they are so heavily researched and historically accurate, and very well painted.”
Warren closed her gallery in 2018, and Esper moved his portfolio to Gallery Victor, a contemporary art gallery in River North. He also opened his freelance business as an art preparator.
“What he does is so totally unique in the art world,” says Victor Armendariz, owner of his namesake gallery. “There is a visceral quality to his work. It’s like, ‘This is really violent and kind of dark, but I can’t stop looking at it.’”
Historical accuracy is a signature of Es-per’s work, which is one reason each painting takes six months to a year to complete. After he chooses a subject, which is a research project in itself, he tackles it with a figurative microscope. He reads every book and news-paper clipping he can find, and he watches every available documentary. He scouts for photographs from multiple angles and scrutinizes the minutiae of each one. What he looks for are landmarks, architectural features, foliage, and makes and models of vehicles to make each painting as true-to-life as possible.
“I count every window in a building,” says Esper, who is currently working on a paint-ing of the General Slocum paddle wheel fire and sinking in New York City in 1904. “I try to avoid making too much up if I can’t find a reference.”
“His paintings pull you in,” Warren says. “The first reaction is always curiosity. You study it as a painting, and then you want to know the history, and then you think about Eric as a painter and wonder who he is.”
Armendariz says he knows exactly who Esper is: “He is such a wonderful human being. Out of all this mayhem and disaster and destruction, he’s an absolute adorable guy.”
Although his paintings have a macabre quality, there is no gore. Viewers are sure to understand the terror and pain of the victims without being subjected to their blood and bodily remains.
“But you know it’s there, that people are jumping out of windows or the train is about to hit the ground,” Warren says. “A lot of art tries to draw attention, whether through sex or violence,” Esper says. “I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to keep it a little disturbing without being too graphic. Something more spooky than grotesque.” Esper’s extensive research and long hours with a paintbrush to capture some of history’s darkest moments have had a personal as well as professional impact on his well-being. The events have prompted a few nightmares, and he has developed an acute awareness of the potential and unexpected dangers that might lurk around the corner. “It’s made me very careful and cautious,” he says. “I’m not going bungee-jumping.”
Ashtabula Train Trestle Collapse, Ohio, 1876 by Eric Edward Esper
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, New York City, 1911 by Eric Edward Esper
The Ringling Brothers Circus Fire by Eric Edward Esper
Charles Manson Family’s Spahn Movie Ranch, Chatsworth, California, 1969 by Eric Edward Esper
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Artisans
The Artisans series spotlights unique and talented artists from the greater Chicago area and beyond.
Chicago Artisan:
Susan Hall
The fine artist paints the sort of ethereal creatures you might recall from your dreams
Susan Hall says she paints like a printmaker. By that, she refers to her limited color palettes, reductive backgrounds and affinity for pattern. Her subject matter is efficient, usually contemplative female figures or peaceful forest denizens, one or two at a time. The thin glazes she applies over textured backgrounds like lace and woodgrain result in ethereal, soft-focus compositions.
One viewer described a Hall painting as trying to remember a dream when you wake up.
“When painting a human figure, I keep the subject somewhat vague, so that viewers are better able to bring their own history to the work,” says Hall, who uses friends and family members as models. “When I paint an animal, however, I strive to convey its individuality—its essence. My hope is that the viewer will relate to the animal as a fellow being with whom we share this delicate planet.”
Hall grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in a family of eight children, including a fraternal twin sister. Her father worked for Ford Motor Company, and her mother was an artist and potter.
“We always had art supplies out, and we were always making stuff,” she says. “That’s how we entertained ourselves.”
Artistic Ventures A creative streak runs throughout the family. One sister is a fashion designer, and a brother is a children’s book author. Through-out high school, Hall continued to draw and paint. She attended Connecticut College in New London, where she graduated with a bachelor of arts degree with a major in art and minor in zoology. Her original intent was a “practical” career in animal sciences, but her passion for art won out. She earned a master of fine arts degree in painting and printmaking from the University of Georgia in Athens.
She began showing and selling her art while supplementing her income by working in retail visual merchandising. It was a fun job that entailed “making a lot of things,” as she describes it, like backdrops for window displays and wrapping tons of fake holiday gifts.
A few years later, she and her twin, who had been living in Boston, moved to Chicago in a return to the Midwest. Hall joined the visual merchandising staff at Lord and Taylor on Michigan Avenue, and she continued to paint. As her art practice grew and awards stacked up, she left the retail space and took intermittent jobs with a decorative painting company.
Making Connections A massive stenciling project for a Gold Coast mansion inspired the art she does today. Always interested in patterns and texture, she experimented with stencils as backgrounds for her own paintings. It was tedious work. One day, in search of a better way, she grabbed a lace tablecloth. After a bit of trial and error, she fell in love with the effects she could achieve.
The technique she developed entails covering a wood panel with a swath of lace or crochet, which she finds at thrift stores, estate sales, and on eBay. (Stains don’t matter.) She adheres the textile by slathering it with gesso and letting it dry for a day or two, then rips it off to reveal an imprinted surface. Depending on her intended subject matter, a few wrinkles or uneven patterning can be desirable.
“Sometimes it comes right off,” she says. “Sometimes it involves needle-nose pliers.” She then applies glaze to see how the surface takes to color. If she doesn’t like it, she sands down the board and starts over. If she does, she proceeds. The lacy pattern shows through the glaze in a way that seems to veil the subject. “I believe we are all connected in some mysterious way,” she says. “I see the patterns as this great tapestry connecting us all.”
“Her work feels related to art that is more regarded as craft, but it also feels related to work that is for real,” says Tim Lowly, art professor and gallery director/curator at North Park University in Chicago and a representational painter. “She bridges the two worlds, and that is an unusual combination.”
The Natural World Revered The artist’s much-lauded work has been exhibited in numerous shows and is held in private and corporate collections throughout the country. She is represented by a quartet of galleries: Lily Pad West, Milwaukee; Lily Pad Gallery, Watch Hill, Rhode Island; Edgewood Orchard Galleries, Fish Creek, Wisconsin; and Tvedten Fine Art, Harbor Springs, Michigan.
Aside from her professional undertakings, Hall, who lives in the near western suburbs with her journalist husband, Bobby Reed, and felines Archie and Hopper, has not strayed far from the zoology studies she once pursued. An avid birder and conservationist, she often frequents area parks and forests, sometimes taking photographs of the wildlife she encounters. She is working on her certification as a Master Naturalist, a program through the University of Illinois Extension. When winter cooperates, which it did not this year, she fashions intricate snow sculptures in the park across from her home, much to the delight of neighbors and passersby. “I have always loved her understanding and reverence for nature, which she ex-presses through her animals and birds,” says art consultant and abstract artist Thomas Masters. “But she does it very subtly. She just shows us that mysterious and wonderful deer standing in a clearing, and you get the message. It’s almost like she’s an environmentalist without the campaign.” “As an artist, the emotion I’m most interested in exploring is empathy,” Hall says. “I feel the same level of empathy for animal subjects as I do for human subjects.” It’s an emotion that her viewers are sure to experience as well.
Dawn by Susan Hall Photo by Bobby Reed
Chronicle by Susan Hall Photo by Bobby Reed
Autumn by Susan Hall Photo by Bobby Reed
Aria by Susan Hall Photo by Bobby Reed
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Chicago Artisan:
Laurie Hogin
The fine artist paints her view of the natural world,
and she wants us to stop destroying it and ourselves.
When Laurie Hogin was growing up in a suburban neighborhood outside Midtown Manhattan, she found sanctuary from a chaotic home in a vast nearby woodland. She learned to name native plants and trees and identify songbirds, wildflowers, fungi and mosses. Deep into the flora and fauna, and accompanied by her two best friends, she found solace and healing.
Then, their beloved forest became an illegal dumping ground heaped with household garbage and industrial waste. The outraged, saddened trio of children raised money for the World Wildlife Fund, and Hogin made propaganda posters for her school homeroom.
“I documented what was happening by drawing it. We didn’t have cameras, so I drew dumps in the woods,” says Hogin, a fine artist, university professor, environmental activist and rescuer of unwanted dogs. “Essentially, I am still doing the same thing.”
BY PAMELA DITTMER McKUEN
Hogin is internationally recognized for her allegorical paintings of mutant animals and plants in dioramas of freakish menageries or individually posed and ornately framed, like classical still lifes. At first glance, her psychedelic-hued subjects appear as warm and inviting as a Walt Disney cartoon, but closer inspection reveals deep nuance and even horror.
In her surreal world, remote vistas are desolate. Monkeys with human faces are screaming and gnashing. Bunnies sport protective tiger stripes. Impossibly pigmented reptiles are slithering amid human skulls. Albino animals and fruits are void of essence.
These are not peaceable kingdoms. They have been subjugated by habitat destruction, pesticides, global warming, genetic modifications, addiction, violence, commercialism, greed and myriad other societal ills.
“It’s the difference between the way the natural environment is traditionally depicted and what’s actually going on with it,” Hogin says.
Mutant Animals as Avatars Depending on the work, Hogin’s mutants are avatars for the human race or symbols of specific human behaviors. Some compositions are political satire, and others are self-portraits. Animals are more fun for her to paint than humans, and they provide greater opportunity for colorization and caricature. A monkey brandishing a firearm or a zoned-out candy-pink guinea pig on tranquilizers is more palatable to viewers than a person doing the same thing.
“Humans are not as separate from evolutionary biology as we might think,” she says. “We, too, are animals. We do aspire to rationality, and that’s important and a good thing, and something we have evolved to do. But we also are driven by our instincts as part of our evolutionary heritage.”
Every element of her work, even her titles, is layered with meaning. Firebirds, which are folkloric creatures who are reincarnated through fire, symbolize adaptation and survival. Rabbits represent feminism and ubiquity.
CMYK Valentines, a reference to the cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink plates used in some printing processes, intro-duces romantic love in the digital age.
My Pretty Ponies of the Apocalypse, a series of seven horse portraits, is a mashup of cultural touchstones: “My Little Pony” toys by Hasbro, All The Pretty Horses novel and movie, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse of Christian literature foretelling the end of times. The paintings are small, relatable to her collection of toy horse figurines, and each is tagged with the chemical name of a common plastic both essential to and destructive of modern life.
Art for a Healthier Society “I don’t think you are going to change policy with artwork,” she says. “What you can do is influence a culture. The fact that art exists in society makes the society healthier because it makes you think more broadly. As an artist, I do my part in that. My hope is to evoke empathy toward all creatures and the ecosystems that support them.”
Hogin earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in 1985, and her Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1989. While a grad student, she worked for an environmental activism group focused on pollution and human health. She also met a fellow student, Greg Boozell, a documentary photographer and filmmaker, whom she married in 1995.
After graduation, Hogin launched her studio practice and exhibition career, but her ultimate goal was to teach. She held several adjunct positions, and in 1997 joined the faculty at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she is a professor of studio art in the School of Art and Design.
She and Boozell reside downstate in a rural area near forest, prairie, river and trails for running and biking. They live with their two adopted mixed-breed dogs and studio companions, Reggie and Xena.
Hogin’s artistry has been exhibited at such prestigious venues as the DePaul Art Museum, DePaul University, Chicago; California Center for the Arts, Escondido; New Museum, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover; and Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans.
She is represented by Tory Folliard Gallery in Milwaukee, Koplin Del Rio in Seattle and Littlejohn Contemporary Art in New York.
“I have always admired Laurie’s work, from her meticulous technique to the research and development that deepen the meaning of every brushstroke,” says Rockford Museum of Art executive director and curator Carrie Johnson. The museum in 2020 put on an exhibition of Hogin’s paintings and sculptures accompanied by her favorite songs and inspirational books.
Says art dealer Tory Folliard: “It is that tension between the beauty of her work and the troubled scene that lies below that I find most compelling. I may not know the specifics of the chaos, but I can certainly tell that something is very wrong in this world, and I want to know why.”
Hogin’s life and work have gone through many changes over the decades, but she’s never left the woodland of her youth far behind. Metaphorically speaking, her “woods” have only expanded.
“As you can see, I’ve never really stopped making those posters,” she says.
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