A lot can happen in a year. Until around this time in 2018, I had been running StudioLab out of the Flatiron Arts Building in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood.

But I closed up the space after doing one last art show and a final, parting installation art piece installed there indefinitely until the art installation resolved itself by having the work removed by others and discarded (which was part of the intent of the installation-a commentary on both personal responsibility and the ephemeral nature of certain types of artistic expression.

I took a sabbatical from the art scene, spent some time refining technique and developing some new ideas and revisiting old approaches. I went pretty extreme in this, moving all the way to Bismarck, North Dakota to work in isolation and without too many distractions save for some good personal life developments that resulted in what’s happening now.

And that happening now is that I am headed back to Illinois, but to Springfield this time, my old home town, to resume my art practice and open a studio space there somewhere. This space is about to get more active due to these developments and while I have commonly used this website as a sort of resume and placeholder, once my practice gets up and running again this site will be a platform for my work, my artist diary, show announcements, and more.

My work has always been fairly personal in nature in spite of that being masked behind a lot of ambiguity and a sort of existential approach to the whole thing. But I feel like it’s finally time to get back into the practice in a major way, live the artist life with all it’s financial terror and uncertainty, and give myself a chance to really screw things up good and proper for better or worse.

So, this could be considered a bit of an announcement that I’m going to come stumbling into Springfield, Illinois and the art scene there looking to make connections, stir up things a wee bit with some unconventional approaches and some user-friendly ones combined, etc.

My big relocation begins at the end of July and there will be much more to come in this space soon. Thank you for your interest and there will be links and images for you to explore related to my work and the work of others I admire. Stay tuned!

–Joey Wallace