While waiting to get my eyebrows waxed for free last summer at Shop CHICago, a femme bazaar sponsored by the nonprofit arts group Gen Art designed to promote girl bonding and the buying of crap, I got into a spat with a tall blond who didn’t understand the concept of a line. She sat down in the chair when it was my turn to go, and when I asked if she was somehow involved with the event–if she had some kind of VIP status–she said, “You must be really insecure to say something like that.”
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This year’s event, held at the sprawling River East Art Center last Thursday, was a lot more dignified: though admission was free and Gen Art estimates that 2,000 people showed up, it felt more like a crowded day at the mall than a giant catfight waiting to happen. About 45 vendors signed up–same as last time–but this year’s bunch included fewer hustlers hawking junk and more upscale boutiques selling chic handmade handbags and jewelry, and local designers with honest-to-goodness talent. And no one was allowed to smoke around the merchandise.
Those T-shirts, like everything Clamdiggin makes, are meant to promote a sweet hippie ethos of finding beauty and happiness in nature. Fisher and Johnson make drawings, paintings, and photographs of animals, produce, and people enjoying the great outdoors and place them in public urban environments–sometimes for pay, more often not. They’ve created dozens of hand-decorated chalkboards and photo backdrops for Cold Comfort, Hejfina, City Soles, and others; they’ve screen-printed cardboard coasters with images of oranges and put them in places that could use a dash of nature, such as Rodan; and they’ve tacked up street art in unassuming places–“nowhere intrusive,” according to Johnson, “just on plywood or old buildings.”
She smiled wryly. “Are you?” she asked.
“I’m really kinda mortified,” Andrea told me afterward. She’d gone up to Boy George and said, “It’s really cool to meet you. I feel like I’ve known you since I was six.” She asked to take his picture and he complied, and then he handed her a postcard promoting himself as someone called DJ Victim. It wasn’t until she walked away and examined it that she realized he was an impersonator.
