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Showing posts with label HEBRU BRANTLEY. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HEBRU BRANTLEY. Show all posts
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Meet the Chicago artists CEOs love to collect
Meet the Chicago artists CEOs love to collect
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Photo by @PropertiesA Hebru Brantley mural at @Properties Uptown office.
For CEOs, adding an impressive piece to the company corporate collection is a subtle way to make a mark. And while some acquire hard-to-find pieces from around the world, others are turning to local artists to get one-of-a-kind work, often with Chicago themes. Here are the local artists getting corporate attention—and dollars.
HEBRU BRANTLEY AND @PROPERTIES' THADDEUS WONG
Photo by @Properties@Properties Peoria Street office.
When @properties co-founder Thaddeus Wong was brainstorming gifts to send to the real estate brokerage's 2,500 top customers, he wanted to make a statement. So in 2015 he commissioned Chicago painter Hebru Brantley to create a coffee table book, a collectible similar to one Brantley had published in the past.
"It just spoke to me—his art is something special," says Wong, who became acquainted with Brantley's work after seeing his mural on Bucktown's Nike store. Brantley has graffiti artist roots, and his cartoon-like work is collected around the globe.
Hebru Brantley, left, and Thaddeus Wong
After the book, Wong commissioned Brantley to paint a family portrait as an anniversary present for his wife (which includes their four children); it hangs in their Lincoln Park home. He also displays an oil painting of Brantley's “Flyboy” character along with a sculpture inside @properties' Goose Island office, and a Brantley mural is on the firm's Uptown office building. "Commissions are always a fun challenge," says Brantley, 36, who replied via email while traveling in Japan but typically works out of his Pilsen studio. Creating a custom piece requires "an understanding of the subjects on a conceptual level," he says.
Michael Small, left and Josh Moulton
JOSH MOULTON AND GOGO'S MICHAEL SMALL
When Chicago artist Josh Moulton met Gogo Chief Executive Michael Small at a technology event at 1871, the tech incubator inside the Merchandise Mart, they stayed in touch via email. Months later, Small asked Moulton—who regularly paints Chicago-centric scenes for corporate clients such as Deloitte, PWC and McDonald's—to add local flavor to a company conference room.
For Small, Moulton created two paintings that show Gogo's exterior (and prominent signage) among the other downtown high-rises. Moulton began the process by taking photos of the exterior views and painting to scale from the photographs. The turnaround took about a month, because he had to capture el tracks, bridges and building facades. "Each (painting) has a ton of little windows," says Moulton, 39, who runs a storefront gallery in Lincoln Park featuring his paintings and prints.
Small says he commissioned the work because it helps employees understand how the in-flight internet-connection company contributes to the fabric of Chicago. "The idea was to make our building prominent, but in the context of the city," he says. "If you wanted to, you could give a city tour right from the painting."
Moulton says the corporate relationships help keep him afloat as an artist. He often provides a selection of photographs to clients and asks them which images they'd like him to depict. Most are scenes of Chicago. "That's what really sells," he adds.
Jeff Zimmerman's mural at 1871
JEFF ZIMMERMAN AND 1871'S HOWARD TULLMAN
Anyone who nears 1871's Merchandise Mart 12th-floor space can't help but notice the colorful mural covering 80 feet of the hallway that leads to the entrance. The artwork, which muralist Jeff Zimmermann painted off-site and later installed, is a tribute to the city's creative minds. A Chicago hot dog sits alongside aerial views of the city and cow heads. The mural was the brainchild of 1871 Chief Executive Howard Tullman. A longtime art collector, Tullman wanted "something young, hip and visually sophisticated," says Zimmermann, who painted the mural in 2014 and works alongside artist Jason Brammer out of a Humboldt Park space.
Jeff Zimmermann, left, and Howard Tullman
The CEO/artist relationship has evolved from there. With the help of Tullman, Zimmermann painted a 90-foot-tall mural in 2016 in Bucktown off of the 606 trail that was sponsored by fellow 1871 resident Conagra. It includes symbols of the city along with one of his signature knots. (It also features an image of Tullman, Zimmermann points out.) Outside work, Tullman hired the muralist to paint a backdrop for a short play he wrote a few years ago. "He's got my loyalty," says Zimmermann, 47.
For his part, Tullman, who is stepping down from 1871 at year-end, says that Zimmermann adds a distinctly Chicago feel to the tech space. The symbols in his mural are meant to give a sort of energy to the office while adding color to the loft-like feel. "It's a very active piece," says Tullman. "We didn't want it to be a situation where (the artwork) would fade into the wall."
Photo by Manuel MartinezJoshua Rogers
ALEX BRADLEY COHEN AND ARETE WEALTH MANAGEMENT'S JOSHUA ROGERS
While Joshua Rogers tends to hang noncommissioned pieces on the walls of his wealth management firm, the CEO has recently made a few exceptions. An abstract portrait of Rogers and his fiancee, commissioned from Chicago artist Alex Bradley Cohen, is a highlight in his personal office at Arete's West Loop headquarters.
Rogers met Cohen through a mutual friend. The two hung out at Rogers' home prior to the commission, says the artist, a 2014 School of the Art Institute graduate who specializes in portraiture. "It felt less like a commission and more like a work of art that I was making for a friend," he says.
Rogers says he was drawn to the quirkiness of his work and was excited to meet an up-and-coming local talent. Cohen often depicts abstract figures in a real-life context. He had a large solo exhibit at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery in New York this fall.
Most of the time, the wealth manager prefers to choose works from Arete's inventory and advises clients to do the same through the firm's year-old art advisory service. To do otherwise is "almost like going to a fine-dining chef and saying you have to add more salt to this dish," Rogers says. "It's kind of a faux pas."
Friday, August 19, 2016
Sunday, April 24, 2016
Friday, March 04, 2016
Monday, October 26, 2015
Sunday, July 06, 2014
Hebru Brantley: King of Arts from Splash section of the Sun-Times
Hebru Brantley: King of Arts
BY Rachel Handler | Photos by Maria Ponce
With hordes of celebrity fans, high-profile exhibits and an ability to inspire hope on Chicago’s South Side, artist Hebru Brantley is Chicago’s own superhero.
When we first encounter our hero, Hebru Brantley, he’s apologizing for the weather. It’s late June, and the 6-foot-8-inch Bronzeville native is in his Pilsen artist loft, where, despite several open windows, a loud fan and a lot of good will on Brantley’s part, the 90-degree heat keeps seeping in. “I’m getting an air-conditioning unit tomorrow,” he promises, wiping sweat from his brow.
If stiflingly hot, the space offers a revealing peek into Brantley’s brain: It’s filled with half-finished artwork that draws on everything from street art to figurative fine art to whimsical cartoons, piles of old Marvel comic books, hundreds of spray paint cans, Xbox games and a Michael Jordan Wheaties box leaning precariously against an empty Champagne bucket. In one corner, a giant sculpture of Fly Boy — Brantley’s signature character, who appears often in his work — dwarfs multiple figurines of The Hulk, the iconic superhero who also makes a cameo in one of Brantley’s bicep tattoos. “He’s always been my favorite superhero,” says Brantley. “I’ve always been attracted to the idea that everyone has two sides. And his raw power — he’s as close to a god as he possibly can be, but he doesn’t have the capacity to understand it.”
It’s not surprising that Brantley identifies with The Hulk, whose existential dilemma, while fantastical, is akin to the artist’s own: How does a gifted man harness his talent to combat evil? Or more specifically, how does an artist like Brantley stay true to his vision, achieve commercial and critical success and inspire hope in one of Chicago’s most blighted neighborhoods — and still make it home in time for dinner?
It’s something Brantley wrestles with often. Though the self-taught artist, 33, has been painting, sculpting, drawing and making short films for nearly two decades, he’s garnered national attention only recently: Last year, he was the featured artist for both Chicago Ideas Week and Chicago Artists Month; in 2012, Jay-Z and Beyoncé dropped $20,000 on one of his paintings at Art Basel; and hip-hop heavyweights like Nicki Minaj, Lupe Fiasco and Swizz Beatz (who Brantley’s texting with during our interview) publicly identify as Brantley’s friends and fans. Currently, he’s showing two exhibits in Chicago — “The Watch,” an installation of 13 sculptures facing Lake Shore Drive, and “Parade Day Rain,” a series of paintings and sculptures on display at the Chicago Cultural Center through Sept. 23.
But like any good superhero, Brantley is conflicted about the trappings of fame. He plays down his celebrity fandom (“It’s cool to be accepted by your contemporaries, to be able to vibe with them on that level, but I try to keep it to myself”), stays mum about most of his personal life (“It’s Hebru the artist versus Hebru the man”) and is particularly concerned about being pigeonholed as the “the hip-hop artist” or “the graffiti artist.” “I don’t want to be a jack of all, master of none, but there are so many things within the realm of the arts that I want to do,” he says. “My intention is to make people happy when they enter a room of my work, to make them smile, make them feel good.”
He aims to accomplish that through what he calls the “universal language”: comic book characters. For the duration of his career, Brantley’s been developing his own set of young superheroes — the Fly Boys and Fly Girls, inspired by the Tuskegee Airmen, the fabled group of black military pilots who fought in World War II. His goggle-sporting protagonists star in “The Watch” as large, colorful sculptures lined up to represent “soldiers, people that are standing up to [things like] violence and hunger”; in “Parade Day Rain,” they’re featured in every piece. “I use these characters as a conduit to say whatever I want,” he explains. “It makes it a lot less harsh and more palatable. The fact is, I don’t necessarily know how to speak or jive well with every individual person — it’s easier for me to speak to them through these characters.”
As for what he’s trying to say? Much of Brantley’s work is aimed at children growing up amid the South Side’s gang violence and poverty, just as he once did. “Kids feel like there are only a handful of ways out: selling drugs, being a rapper, being an athlete. To say, ‘I’m a black kid who grew up on the South Side of Chicago and I created this,’ that gives them another option,” he says. “When you travel through the South Side, the only art you see is Chester Cheetah, somebody selling kids a product that’s really terrible for them. I want to relate to those kids that have never set foot in a museum or seen art. … I want that to be my mission and my purpose.”
After some prodding, the modest Brantley admits to some progress. “Kids all the time say things like, ‘You’re my hero, I wanna be just like you when I grow up.’ ” At “Parade Day Rain,” “I saw all of these kids that got up to the Cultural Center on their own,” he says. “I’m watching them look at the work, digesting it. And seeing me, thinking, ‘Man, he looks like us.’ ”
It’s not dissimilar from Brantley’s own origin story: Growing up in the 1980s, he channeled his creative impulses into compulsive comic-book reading, spray-painting street art onto abandoned buildings with his friends (which he calls “the base of everything I do now”) and “taking apart my toys and reassembling them.” In high school, after his mother introduced him to fine artists (and current role models) Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, art became Brantley’s refuge from the gangs outside. “It was just me, walking my a** home, doing homework, art and TV,” he says. “That was my day.”
In college, he sold hats and T-shirts bearing his designs, but wasn’t convinced he could channel his creative powers into a career until a good friend bought one of his paintings for a significant sum. “I realized, ‘This is where my heart is,’ ” he recalls. That was in 2002. Today Brantley still holds tight to that passion — and his healthy dose of artist’s angst. “There’s so much more to accomplish,” he says. “I have so much that I want to say, and there’s only so much time. … I feel like I’m forever doomed to chasing the idea of the perfect painting.” He pauses, then laughs. “I’m a happy person — I’m not like Snuffleupagus — but I just strive for greatness.”
Fortunately, Brantley has plenty of people in his life that help relieve that pressure. He’s a father to son Jayden, 11, from a previous relationship, and he’s parented his younger sister Shea since she was 9 (his mother and stepfather both died of cancer five years ago; he lost his father to cancer last month). “All of her friends and their parents, they’re like ‘You’re the strictest parent and you’re not even [Shea’s] parent,’ ” he laughs. In September, he’ll marry his longtime girlfriend, model Angela Carroll, whom he calls his “muse.” “She’s always inspiring me to be better,” he says, smiling.
In that vein, he’s planning his next work, which he’ll start this summer. “I want to go through Englewood and just put art up, break up the space and the groupings of absolute nothing in hopes that it strikes a chord with one or two people in that community,” he says. And like a superhero plotting his next exploit, Brantley is keeping the details to himself. “It’s not even something I want to publicize,” he says. “I just want to do it because it’s something I’m close to. I want to give art to them as my gift.”
VIDEO OF THE PHOTO SHOOT
“When I initially started planning for this show, I had no idea how it would parallel my life — dealing with the notion of somebody raining on your parade, when things are at their highest and then their lowest. While I was [preparing for] this show, I found out that my father was sick, that he had cancer. A month before the show, his health really took a turn for the worse. I had to force creativity while being just depleted inside, because I’m watching my father die. He passed two weeks before the show opened. I didn’t realize at the time that a lot of the work — and I don’t expect anyone else to pull that from it if you don’t know me — directly correlates with what I was going through.”
“I’m a huge fan of mythology, and the biggest form of that now is through comics. Within my culture, we don’t really have a true mythology, but [this series] is spinning that, presupposing that if these characters were people of color, how they’d fit into that mythos. As a showpiece, in making these characters people of color, it changes the lore and the mythology of everything.”
“It’s intended to be sort of an infectious movement, something that can grab people’s attention and say, ‘Hey, this is a problem that exists.’ The whole purpose of ‘The Watch’ is to draw your attention to that elephant. Just sort of be in your face, be infectious. It’s like a gang in a sense, or a cult, where you have one person convincing another person, and everyone’s signing up slowly but surely.”
Stylist: favia, Ford artist
Shoot coordinator: Katerina Bizios
When we first encounter our hero, Hebru Brantley, he’s apologizing for the weather. It’s late June, and the 6-foot-8-inch Bronzeville native is in his Pilsen artist loft, where, despite several open windows, a loud fan and a lot of good will on Brantley’s part, the 90-degree heat keeps seeping in. “I’m getting an air-conditioning unit tomorrow,” he promises, wiping sweat from his brow.
If stiflingly hot, the space offers a revealing peek into Brantley’s brain: It’s filled with half-finished artwork that draws on everything from street art to figurative fine art to whimsical cartoons, piles of old Marvel comic books, hundreds of spray paint cans, Xbox games and a Michael Jordan Wheaties box leaning precariously against an empty Champagne bucket. In one corner, a giant sculpture of Fly Boy — Brantley’s signature character, who appears often in his work — dwarfs multiple figurines of The Hulk, the iconic superhero who also makes a cameo in one of Brantley’s bicep tattoos. “He’s always been my favorite superhero,” says Brantley. “I’ve always been attracted to the idea that everyone has two sides. And his raw power — he’s as close to a god as he possibly can be, but he doesn’t have the capacity to understand it.”
It’s not surprising that Brantley identifies with The Hulk, whose existential dilemma, while fantastical, is akin to the artist’s own: How does a gifted man harness his talent to combat evil? Or more specifically, how does an artist like Brantley stay true to his vision, achieve commercial and critical success and inspire hope in one of Chicago’s most blighted neighborhoods — and still make it home in time for dinner?
It’s something Brantley wrestles with often. Though the self-taught artist, 33, has been painting, sculpting, drawing and making short films for nearly two decades, he’s garnered national attention only recently: Last year, he was the featured artist for both Chicago Ideas Week and Chicago Artists Month; in 2012, Jay-Z and Beyoncé dropped $20,000 on one of his paintings at Art Basel; and hip-hop heavyweights like Nicki Minaj, Lupe Fiasco and Swizz Beatz (who Brantley’s texting with during our interview) publicly identify as Brantley’s friends and fans. Currently, he’s showing two exhibits in Chicago — “The Watch,” an installation of 13 sculptures facing Lake Shore Drive, and “Parade Day Rain,” a series of paintings and sculptures on display at the Chicago Cultural Center through Sept. 23.
But like any good superhero, Brantley is conflicted about the trappings of fame. He plays down his celebrity fandom (“It’s cool to be accepted by your contemporaries, to be able to vibe with them on that level, but I try to keep it to myself”), stays mum about most of his personal life (“It’s Hebru the artist versus Hebru the man”) and is particularly concerned about being pigeonholed as the “the hip-hop artist” or “the graffiti artist.” “I don’t want to be a jack of all, master of none, but there are so many things within the realm of the arts that I want to do,” he says. “My intention is to make people happy when they enter a room of my work, to make them smile, make them feel good.”
He aims to accomplish that through what he calls the “universal language”: comic book characters. For the duration of his career, Brantley’s been developing his own set of young superheroes — the Fly Boys and Fly Girls, inspired by the Tuskegee Airmen, the fabled group of black military pilots who fought in World War II. His goggle-sporting protagonists star in “The Watch” as large, colorful sculptures lined up to represent “soldiers, people that are standing up to [things like] violence and hunger”; in “Parade Day Rain,” they’re featured in every piece. “I use these characters as a conduit to say whatever I want,” he explains. “It makes it a lot less harsh and more palatable. The fact is, I don’t necessarily know how to speak or jive well with every individual person — it’s easier for me to speak to them through these characters.”
One of Brantley’s recent pieces, designed in collaboration with Artpentry for Soho House Chicago’s pre-launch party
After some prodding, the modest Brantley admits to some progress. “Kids all the time say things like, ‘You’re my hero, I wanna be just like you when I grow up.’ ” At “Parade Day Rain,” “I saw all of these kids that got up to the Cultural Center on their own,” he says. “I’m watching them look at the work, digesting it. And seeing me, thinking, ‘Man, he looks like us.’ ”
It’s not dissimilar from Brantley’s own origin story: Growing up in the 1980s, he channeled his creative impulses into compulsive comic-book reading, spray-painting street art onto abandoned buildings with his friends (which he calls “the base of everything I do now”) and “taking apart my toys and reassembling them.” In high school, after his mother introduced him to fine artists (and current role models) Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, art became Brantley’s refuge from the gangs outside. “It was just me, walking my a** home, doing homework, art and TV,” he says. “That was my day.”
In college, he sold hats and T-shirts bearing his designs, but wasn’t convinced he could channel his creative powers into a career until a good friend bought one of his paintings for a significant sum. “I realized, ‘This is where my heart is,’ ” he recalls. That was in 2002. Today Brantley still holds tight to that passion — and his healthy dose of artist’s angst. “There’s so much more to accomplish,” he says. “I have so much that I want to say, and there’s only so much time. … I feel like I’m forever doomed to chasing the idea of the perfect painting.” He pauses, then laughs. “I’m a happy person — I’m not like Snuffleupagus — but I just strive for greatness.”
Brantley and his fiancé Angela Carroll
In that vein, he’s planning his next work, which he’ll start this summer. “I want to go through Englewood and just put art up, break up the space and the groupings of absolute nothing in hopes that it strikes a chord with one or two people in that community,” he says. And like a superhero plotting his next exploit, Brantley is keeping the details to himself. “It’s not even something I want to publicize,” he says. “I just want to do it because it’s something I’m close to. I want to give art to them as my gift.”
VIDEO OF THE PHOTO SHOOT
State of the art
Brantley’s recent work, in his own words:
‘Parade Day Rain’ exhibit, 2014
‘Negro Mythos’ series, 2013
‘The Watch’ exhibit, 2014
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Shoot credits
Photographer: Maria PonceStylist: favia, Ford artist
Shoot coordinator: Katerina Bizios
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