Barton Faist This is Me

Education

 Web References

1. 1. Chicago Magazine

   www.chicagomag.com/homegarden/ - [Cached]

   Published on: 8/24/2002   Last Visited: 8/24/2002

   Allowing us in are Tree Studios residents Jim Romano and his wife, Ruth, a teacher; lawyer Roger Derstine; and painters Helen Oh, Andrew Conk- lin, Lou Ann Burkhardt, and Barton Faist.
   ...
   The week following Lilien's memorial service in Chicago, Burkhardt and her neighbor Barton Faist were here reminiscing.
   ...
   "She acted like a grande dame, like the loveliest woman in the world," says Barton Faist of Miss Lilien.
   ...
   In the following years, Faist would get to know Miss Lilien and other members of the Tree Studios' old guard.
   ...
   Faist, 45, grew up in Elkton, Michigan, and attended Central Michigan University, then transferred to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. After working as an illustrator in Chicago, he studied in Florence for a year and, on returning to the city, started teaching at a drawing workshop in Tree Studios. In 1982, when a foundation grant came through, he moved into a small second-floor space with a view of the courtyard and began concentrating on commissioned portraits.
   
   Today, that studio is crammed with art, objects, and papers. "I call those my gem tables," Faist says, indicating surfaces that hold iridescent stones, Greek and Roman vessels, and Art Nouveau vases-subject matter for future paintings. Nearby is a grouping of stuffed hummingbirds, arranged on shelves above are framed butterflies and a 1985 still life by Faist featuring a glowing row of tall aluminum glasses from the 1950s. "You should have seen, when I used to dust," he says, "how bright this stuff got."
   
   ...
   In 1985, at the urging of some of his Tree Studios neighbors, Faist says, he began buying and selling artwork. "It was getting too crowded in here," he recalls, so in the early nineties he rented a second studio across the hall to serve as a gallery. "I have sculptures by Ivan Albright's twin brother, and paintings-modernists, regionalists, WPA-mostly art from the twenties, thirties, forties."
   
   ...
   Originally, Faist says, it was part of the inside door that leads to what are now Derstine's and Burkhardt's studios.
   ...
   Especially in recent years, Faist has done what he can to prevent that possibility. All the residents featured here have supported preserving the building as a place for artists to work and live-at discussions, hearings, demonstrations-but Faist has been one of the most committed advocates, at times perhaps carrying on the crusade to his own detriment. Two commissioned portraits in his studio appear not to have been touched in months.
   
   Instead, he has researched the history of Tree Studios, compiled a list of more than 550 artists who have worked there, given tours of the building, and presented slide shows about it. He helped spearhead a letter-writing campaign and distributed post cards printed with an image of his painting Approaching Storm Threatens Tree Studios. In 1999, at the request of Lois Weisberg, the city's commissioner of cultural affairs, he and fellow curators Barbara Koenen and Tim Samuelson organized the exhibition "Capturing Sunlight: The Art of Tree Studios."
   
   Faist is not going quietly, but in December, he called to remind me of the Dickens Carol-In at Burkhardt's. "I've moved 51 paintings out of my gallery," he said, "and it still looks full."
   
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