Karl Wirsum Jean Albano 215 W. Superior through October 16 312-440-0770
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Wirsum, 64, was affected strongly by two childhood traumas. When he fractured his skull at five and was hospitalized, his machinist father drew comic strips about elves for him, and Wirsum focused on his own drawings too. That led to Saturday classes at the Art Institute. But when Wirsum was nine, both his parents were killed in a car crash. Karl survived with just a scratch. Describing himself as “pretty devastated,” he says he began to identify with Oliver Twist and other orphans in Classics Illustrated comics. Close friends of his parents raised him, but he associated the Saturday art classes with his parents and would have found it “spooky” to keep going, so he quit.
Today Wirsum says he’s inspired by highly stylized art that bears “some connection to reality.” A north-side ice cream vendor he photographed in the 1960s was the primary source for the goofy figure pushing a hand truck in Whatz Behind the Green Door? One of the man’s feet is bare while on the other is an oversize shoe, an idea that came from a shop on Ashland that made footwear for special needs. But because the artist is fascinated by asymmetry, he says, he put it “illogically” on the vendor’s longer leg.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Suzy Poling.
