Participating Galleries: Around the Coyote Gallery, Blake Palmer Gallery, David Leonardis Gallery, Gosia Koscielak Studio & Gallery, Green Lantern, Johnsonese Gallery, Lloyd Dobler Gallery, The Society for the Arts, Teti Gallery
Extended Gallery hours, special receptions and performances

Chicago, IL - The newly formed Wicker Park Bucktown Gallery Association is holding its first Second Saturday event on December 9, 2006 from 6-10pm at multiple venues throughout Wicker Park and Bucktown. The WBGA is an organization of galleries in the Wicker Park and Bucktown neighborhood (roughly defined with the southern border at Division, the northern border at Fullerton, the western border at Western, and the eastern border at the Chicago River). Membership is by invitation, and is limited to: curated spaces that exhibit multiple artists throughout the year; galleries that do not charge their artists a fee to exhibit; galleries that operate within the contemporary art dialogue; galleries that operate within the ethical and professional practice guidelines developed by the Wicker Park Bucktown Gallery Association.

The WPBGA will work to promote Wicker Park and Bucktown as a visual arts destination for collectors and art world professionals, while actively working to attract new galleries. WPBGA will promote the artists and programs of its members through advertising, public programs, and collaborative events.

1935 ˝ W. North Ave.
Multiples & Miniatures Exhibition and Naughty or Vice Holiday Monologues
extended gallery hours December 9 from 6-10pm, Holiday Monologues begin at 7:30pm
aroundthecoyote.org, 773.342.6777

Around the Coyote is pleased to announce the opening of its annual Multiples & Miniatures exhibition, a large and singular group exhibition of small and manifold artwork by artists working in various media. Multiples & Miniatures features art priced from $20-$2000 for the gift-giving season.

Exhibited artists: Elise Blue, Nicole Dudik, Sue Fox, Brent Houston, Damien James, Gwynne Johnson, Debra Kayes, Lora Klaviter, Ronald Lambert, Ross Martens, Jasmine McCaffrey, David More, Darren Oberto, Erik Sanchez, Shawn Stucky, and Angela Yonke.

Multiples & Miniatures will be exhibited in conjunction with Naughty or Vice, a series of original monologues exploring the darker side of the winter holidays. Naughty or Vice is the work of five Chicago-based solo performers whose imperfect holiday experiences are explored in short, fifteen-minute pieces. Naughty or Vice is written and performed by Margot Bordelon, Tim Bruns, Cynthia Castiglione, Brian Lobel and Braden LuBell. Monologues range from an ill-fated Christmas Eve dinner in a Wendy's parking lot to a dissection of Adam Sandler's Hanukah Song. These delightfully acerbic pieces take an unapologetic look at the year's most magnified holiday.

1656 N. Bosworth
Holiday Season Group Exhibition of Gallery Artists
extended gallery hours Dec. 9 from 6-10pm
blakepalmeergallery.com, 773.384.4142

The Blake Palmer Gallery is bringing together their "family" of artists for their fist year-end show showcasing the artwork exhibited throughout the 2006 season. As a way of saying thanks for a great year, all that entered their name on their guest list, will receive up to 20% off of any item in the show.

1346 N. Paulina St.
Happy Birthday Howard Finster and Friends
Opening reception December 9 from 6-10 pm
www.DLG-gallery.com, 773.278.3058

The Rev. Howard Finster is known as the Grandfather of Contemporary American Folk Art. Finster got a vision from God to paint sacred art while painting a bicycle in the basement of his home. The paint on his thumb formed a face and told him to paint sacred art. He pulled a dollar bill out of his pocket and painted George Washington. Shortly after that he became an internationally known, collected and sought after artist. David Leonardis has purchased Howard's original home in Summerville, Georgia where he had the vision from God and is turning it into the Howard Finster Vision House Museum. On display in the DLG WICKER PARK will be Finster originals, signed limited edition silk screens framed in molding designed by Finster in the 1960's. Also showing original artwork will be gallery artists Chris Peldo, Joe Pellegrini, Miro, Daniel Johnston, Walter Fydryck, Andy Kane, Bill Eaton, Herb Nolan, Michel Balasis, Marc Hauser, Rita Akao, Mike Winn and Stephen Tompkins.

1646 N. Bosworth Ave.
All the World's a Stage: November 11th-December 27th
extended gallery hours Dec. 9 from 6-10pm
gosiakoscielak.com, 847.858.1540

Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle, Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Stephen Lambert's Reality TV; what do these immensely disparate individuals-a cultural theorist, a philosopher, and creator of a TV genre, respectively-and their ideas have in common? They all recognize the thin line between reality and artifice. Emma McCagg's solo show All the World's a Stage exhibits a new body of work that is concerned in narrating the meltdown of fact and fiction and its social, political and cultural affectation. These works are constituted from a convergence of pulp journalism and political infomercials that subsequently make it difficult to tell the veracity of one source of information over the other. The individual pieces in the exhibition dovetail on what McCagg construes as a kind of mass cultural schizophrenia manifest in the contemporary world.

1511 N Milwaukee Ave., 2nd Floor
extended hours December 9th, 6-9pm
Out of the Woods: November 17th-December 16th
thegreenlantern.org, 773.235.0936

Chicago Printmaker Mat Daly will show a new series of paintings about the intrigue and trepidation inherent in a natural wood.

With a background in screen printing, Mat Daly dedicates a series of paintings to the surface. Discreet shapes take hold of the picture plane, weaving in and out of one another in remote and psychological landscapes of abstraction. Engaging his own bewilderment and wonder, Daly activates questions about surface and depth, dredging those emotive moments to the surface, where they sit unequivocally, like oil on a pond. Despite this democratic analysis of form and content, the picture frame remains dark, the truths gleaned subtle and murky, and one's appetite to access a subversive current increases exponentially without any hope of relief. Even in paint one is stuck to the surface, privy only to what is revealed. .

In conjunction with Mat Daly's premiere painting show, The Green Lantern will be celebrating the official birth of its newest appendage. The opening will be the official beginning of The Green Lantern Press, which is proud to present two new books by two young authors. Mat Daly created and hand-printed the covers of Nicholas A. Sarno III's God Bless the Squirrel Cage and Moshe Zvi Marvit's Urbesque

2149 W. Armitage
Opening reception Saturday, December 9th, 6-10pm
Holiday Salon: December 9th-January 13th
johnsonese.com, 773.252.8750

Johnsonese Gallery is featuring artists who have shown at the gallery throughout 2006 in their year-end show, Holiday Salon.

Exhibited Artists: Joseph Innocenti, Elizabeth Tyson, Joey Wozniak, Brian Graves, Bruce Mortenson, Fernando Cerda.

1545 W Division, 2nd Floor
Wondergems: November 17th-January 5th
extended gallery hours Dec. 9 from 6-10pm
lloyddoblergallery.com, 312.961.8706

Lloyd Dobler Gallery is pleased to continue the fall art season with the opening of Wondergems, a group show featuring a range of medium. Wondergems features: Erin Johnson, Matt Wedel, Adam Ekberg, Amanda Browder, Lilli Carré, Ashley Lathe, James Jankowiak, Eric Guerrero, Julia Nestigen-Palm, and Paul Simmons.

This exhibition focuses on works created with a sophisticated innocence. The work is seemingly straight forward with an air of the fictional. One can look at the works in the space and start to narrate their own story, bringing in each of the works separately. Erin Johnson's window piece, made entirely out of tape, is ethereal and striking when the light hits it. The viewer is able to see images cut into the work, referencing tree roots and branches, and can look out of the window, and see actual tress in the city square across the street. This piece also leads into Amanda Browder's soft sculptures of a campfire in the center of the gallery. Both artists use dissimlar materials to reference nature in their work.

1112 N Milwaukee Ave.
Peek: December 2nd-January 12th
extended gallery hours Dec. 9 from 6-10pm
societyforarts.com , 773.486.9612

Peek is an exhibition designed to give the viewer a small preview of the work and shows planned for exhibition at 1112 Gallery in 2007. Included is the fashion photography of Yelena Yemchuk, whose clients include Vera Wang, Cacharel, Nuala, Drries Van Noten and Christian Lacroix; Andrzej Kozyra's miniature paintings in tempera on wood; Victoria Martin's monumental oil paintings; Liliana Perez -Reynolds's collection of nudes; Queng Hong's beautifully crafted oil paintings; Sheila Finnigan's works speaking of Warhol-era New York; and Paul Elledge and Leasha Overturf's current photography.

2250 West North Avenue, 2nd floor
Daniel Derwelis: Paintings
extended gallery hours and closing reception December 9 from 7-10pm
tetigallery.com, 847.903.5360

Paintings brings together Derwelis' recent work in large- and small-format oil canvases. Derwelis' figural and representational paintings display an array of views, both constructed and observed, which are depicted in monochromatic studies and colorful narratives. Derwelis' large-scale paintings address wildly varying subjects with equally diverse ends. They distinguish themselves through a delicate stasis, which is imbued with a subtle urgency so powerful that only a single facial expression or gesture is needed to animate a scene. Derwelis masterfully renders this emotive potential in quotidian tableaux and clandestine portraits, though none of his settings easily betray what lies beneath. These pictures are filled with ambiguity; hope and despair, anger and humor, play and suspense dance with one another within a singe scene.

In Derwelis' smaller paintings the intimate portraits, character and scene studies and a narrative triptych are all rendered differently, as necessitated by the mood. Renaissance gravitas, psychological tension, modern fashion and a cinematic eye color these pieces each their own. Daniel Derwelis holds an MFA in painting from the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from the University of Texas. Derwelis has shown throughout Chicago, most recently at the Contemporary Art Workshop. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.