Paintings are bizarre spaces that work as both windows and objects, generating references and experiences. You cannot eat paintings and they aren’t fiscally responsible, but they embody the quirks of human psychology, including both the brilliance and ridiculousness of abstract thought. How many games of tic-tac-toe can be played? How many paintings can be made? It’s just semantics . . . and syntax. A lot comes out of nothing.

I explore the dark side of glamour and its allure, to both celebrate and critique popular culture’s myths about itself. Symbols drawn from fashion and youth culture are layered and patterned with personal illustrations in order to lure viewers into dizzying, colorful images. I often use the process of silkscreening to reveal both the breaks in the veneer and the complexity underneath. Through an interdisciplinary approach to personal memoir, I relay ongoing accounts of a melodramatic, queer mythology where glamour rises from the trash can.

Shane Walsh makes paintings that borrow from historical abstraction and graphic imagery. Approaching painting as a form of collage, he playfully dissects and then reconstructs visual languages to arrive at a form of abstract painting that is both autobiographical and historically aware. This cut-and-paste ethos is a direct result of his involvement with various subcultures of the 1990s. His omnivorous appetite for visual culture results in a wide array of references, quotations, techniques, and materials that ultimately fuse into Frankenstein-like compositions, melded but never seamless.

I adopt the term superplastic to characterize my work. An extremely methodical yet efficient approach to painting reveals itself in dissociated and digitized images. The paintings are plastic in nature and present themselves as slick, flat, and fast, creating an experience similar to that of viewing an image on a screen. My interest in capturing and maintaining the viewer’s attention gives way to optical deceit and trompe-l’oeil elements within the work. The saturated colors I employ heighten my subtle intimations of the absurd with a childlike sincerity.

Making images is my love language. I often find it difficult to express my self openly, being a queer woman who comes from a conservative religious family. Embracing both my lifestyle and love for my family felt impossible, so my embroidery has become a testament to my love and devotion to my family and myself.

I paint the fantasy of me. This is my story, replete with the screw-ups, the pleasures, and the pleasant fictions. Who am I? I wasn’t born here. I’ve never looked upon the face of someone with the same blood as I have. Never seen my eyes in someone else. I often paint fictional portraits that surface from my yearning imagination. Some are illuminated by the refulgence of past encounters like the glowing filament in a freshly turned-off light bulb. And some come from who knows where. People come and go. My parents died too young. I’m hurtling through this

My work is rooted in my early life as an evangelical Christian in the rural Midwest. I grew up believing the end of the world was imminent and Jesus would return to collect his followers at any moment. I am no longer a believer, but Christian fundamentalism and its manifestations in contemporary culture continue to fascinate me and inform my work.

Gooey, flowing, wet, stagnant, and slipping into place. The surfaces of cloth, paint, plastic, and paper move along like the dirty Des Plaines River. I witness the places where nature and discarded design make art.

Great graphic surfaces form next to toppled trees, where deer will die and mushrooms will emerge. We throw things away while daily drama unfolds. In Schiller Woods South, commercial scraps go down the river, and its misty waters carry styrofoam rafts. It is still beautiful, it is tragic, it is a high-speed blender.

What do you paint when you believe so much in painting, but have no faith whatsoever in that belief? What do you paint when all you can see is yourself, and you know you’re a liar? What do you paint when no one cares about painting, then when everyone cares about painting, then when no one cares again? What do you paint when no one is looking? John McLaughlin once said that the most difficult part of making music was getting out of the way, that you have to forget, forget everything. All I’m trying to do is get out of the way.

Rolón has been recognized for his elaborately crafted paintings, ornate sculptures, and works that come out of American, Latino, and uniquely based subcultures. His studio practice investigates pop culture, craft, ritual, beauty, and its relationship to art history, subculture, appropriation, and the institution. As a first-generation immigrant of Puerto Rican descent, the artist creates objects that examine the concepts of luxury and craft-making to explore questions of identity, integration, and aspiration. He often addresses his biography by melding