A Transformative Moment

Half way through his fourth grade, Wallace and his family moved from St. Louis, Missouri, to Chicago.

On arriving in his new school, the first big project that the young Wallace was set to work on was about Thomas Jefferson. “Back then, you know, if you were affluent, you had encyclopedias. We didn’t.” Wallace recalls time spent in the library, pouring over books.

He was struck by a small print of Jefferson’s image on a book’s sleeve, “and so I traced it—I traced it completely, and when I handed in my report, I included the drawing.”

To his astonishment, and to his parents’ chagrin, Wallace recalls – “I was suspended from school for plagiarism!”

It was a severe punishment, he remembers. “But it was a turning point in my mind. From that point forward I decided, I will only ever do my own work. I’ll never recreate anyone else’s work. I’ll never do what anybody else does. It was truly pivotal for me.”

The Story of Studio 2846: Part Three

This blog post is part of an ongoing series. Click to read Part One and Part Two.

There was a receptionist behind a tempered glass partition. She looked up at them for a moment, “Mr. Krupp’s office is down the hallway to the left,” then looked back down at her crossword.

Wallace and his friend walked down to find the office, where Mr. Krupp welcomed them, evidently mistaking them for someone with a prior appointment. “We haven’t listed the building yet, but the price is firm. Would you like to take a look around?” Wallace agreed.

They toured each floor of the building with the owner. The place was trashed - boarded windows, no daylight, and no fresh air. One floor was filled with oil-driven sewing machines, a Latino woman hunched over each one, hard at work. At their feet, the floors were scorched where sparks from the electrical conduit had ignited the oil-soaked wood.

On the next floor up, Wallace remembers men pulling silk screens at rows upon rows of tables, stretching from the front wall to the back of the enormous space. There was paint everywhere, and a smell of turps and lacquer so strong that he felt heady walking in. “It was dreadful. A sweatshop. I knew I would have to completely gut the space. But the building had so much potential.”

They headed back down to the office, where Wallace explained to the owner “I’m not who you think I am, but I want to buy the building. I just need a couple of weeks to come up with the money.” Mr. Krupp said he didn’t care who bought the place, he was firm on the price and just needed to sell it.

Return soon to read the next installment of The Story of Studio 2846, or subscribe on the right to receive updates as they’re posted.

The Story of Studio 2846: Part Two

This blog post is part of an ongoing series, Part One of which can be found by clicking here.

At that time, Wallace was living in Rockford, Illinois where he had converted a 950 square foot bungalow into a larger studio and living space. For some time now, the artist had been contemplating the idea of moving closer to the gallery in NYC, but feared that buying even a very small studio in Manhattan would cripple his finances.

Upon losing the Ruth Siegal Gallery, Wallace knew he needed to find a way around relying exclusively on galleries to show his work. He began toying with the idea of a studio and living space in Chicago, where he hoped he could afford to buy something with a little more room.

Wallace spent much of 1989 looking all over Chicago for a space. He explored over twenty buildings before he finally found what would become Studio 2846. Wallace would drive into Chicago from Rockford to visit a few building in one area during the day, and would return later, after dark to experience the area by night – how did it feel? Could he live there? Most, he recalls, were too intense or deserted by night. He kept looking.

At the time, Chicago’s Humboldt Park area was extremely troubled. Crime was rampant. “The area was dangerous, there’s no doubt about that. But it was inexpensive and the buildings, though deeply neglected, could be turned into anything if you had the guts and the vision. The potential just called out to me.”

One day, Wallace recalls, he made a right onto North Avenue as the sun broke through the clouds, illuminating a boarded up, grimy, yellow brick building. There was no for sale sign, but he turned to his friend – “I have to take a look at that place.” His friend shrugged. They went in.

Return soon to read the next installment of The Story of Studio 2846, or subscribe on the right to receive updates as they’re posted.

Unretouched

An invitation to Wallace's first museum exhibition, Unretouched, We Wander Though Dream's Reality. 

The exhibition opened in the summer of 1973 at the Burpee Art Museum in Rockford, Illinois and featured the works of Wallace and one of his contemporaries, Paul Pinzarrone. At the time, Wallace was an undergraduate at the University of Illinois.

The Pause Between Breaths

Artist, Jonathan D. Wallace

Artist Jonathan D. Wallace has been painting for almost four decades. He divides his time between his studios in Chicago and Montana, working at various scales, and primarily in oils. A classically trained painter and printmaker, Wallace considers himself a philosopher first and foremost: “A philosopher and a journeyman. Leaving traces for people along the way, to help them I hope, in their own             journeys.”

An ethereal quality permeates Wallace’s works, which are luminous with vitality. Fertile forest environments compose the setting of his paintings, which are laden with a rich language of symbolism and motifs that can be followed and unearthed throughout his career. His pieces present a juxtaposition, featuring recognizable everyday objects within a dreamlike milieu, and are fixated around the internal experience – in his words, “the transitional moments of the mind, that pause between breaths.” However, he says, “truly, what I want the paintings to do is to be really beautiful. It makes no difference to me if somebody looks at the work and doesn’t understand the journey I took. I believe that if I am sincere about my journey, it will come across in some form to the person in front of my work.”

Since the mid-seventies, Wallace has exhibited frequently at museums and galleries across the country. His most recent museum showing was at the Butler Institute of American Art as part of the 2008 exhibition, Things I See, which featured five of his oil pastels on paper, a series which the artist was moved to create following the death of his father. “I was working maybe twenty hours a day at that point, desperate to get it all down, not to lose anything.” The dramatic works vibrate with energy and depth. Each of the pieces in the series focuses on one key moment in life, “those fleeting moments where we grasp an essential truth about our existence.”

Wallace describes the act of painting as orchestral, and often works on numerous pieces at one time. This allows him to layer his focus, concentrating on one canvas, glazing and moving to another, before returning to the first piece, bringing the works to completion in rotation. He paints in a spectrum of sizes from small canvases up to pieces of over 12 foot wide. In creating his works, Wallace will often begin with a few words or a line of poetry. “Sometimes that will trigger an image, it will be the seed for a painting. Other times I already see the painting before the first word is written. It’s all part of the same process for me – a fragmented thought, a thumbnail sketch.”

Born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1951, Wallace has a long and colorful history with the art world. During his early twenties, he was featured in his first museum exhibition at the Burpee Art Museum in Rockford, Illinois. Shortly afterwards, he helped build the Galveston Island Art Center in Texas, and later, was the Interim Director at the Rockford Art Museum, launching them into their new space as a regional art museum.

For eight months of the year Wallace lives and works in his studio in a 1920s factory building in Chicago’s Humboldt Park area. In 1990 when Wallace bought the building, the district was extremely troubled and rife with gang warfare. The factory was derelict at that time and had been completely trashed, the plumbing and structure ravaged by neglect. These days the building, which Wallace renovated by hand, is occupied by 17 artist studios. Wallace and his wife, interior designer Deborah Rogers, live and work on the top two floors. Their space is a 10,000 square foot light-filled loft, in which huge looming canvasses and smaller, intense studies compete for space. He estimates that around 90 completed works currently hang in the studio.

During the summer months, Wallace retreats to his studio in Trego, Montana, which he built in 2005. He says that Montana has influenced his work in many ways. “There’s no pollution at all, and so the light goes on forever. It imbues everything you see. In Montana I live with a constant sense of awe and reverence. It informs everything. It’s in the air you breathe. It compels me to paint.”