Ted Joans at ZÜRCHER Mike Cloud at THOMAS ERBEN

James Kalm “slides like a viper through the suburban streets” (or something to that effect), keeping his eyes and ears open. Jazz is one of the sounds your correspondent hears regularly downtown. So, when he comes across an exhibition that leverages the jazz of the beats against a poetic “outsider” sensibility, he can’t help but focuses his attention on the source. “Jazz Is My Religion” is the first presentation of the works by poet, and former musician Ted Joans, at Zürcher Gallery. Featuring drawings, many on found materials like Trader Joe’s shopping bags, or plastic cutting boards, that depict scenes of the artist’s travels and friendships. Charlie Parker “The Bird”, Allen Ginsberg, and Andre Breton are just a few of the many notable personages Joans met and memorialized. Slithering across town to Chelsea, viewers can visit an exhibition of works by noted Chicago artist Mike Cloud titled “Holistic Abstraction” at Thomas Erben Gallery. Cloud makes “paintings” that seem to challenge every notion of traditional painting. Using store bought stretcher bars, and home-made mops fashioned from strips of artists canvas and broomsticks, the artist constructs frames that he then staples and glues the linen to. These structures have a primordial geometry that is more related to a large-scale talisman, than the flatness of Greenbergian formalist abstraction. This program was recorded October 6 and 12, 2024. #jameskalmreport #jameskalmroughcut #lorenmunk