About Uss Gallery
Uss Gallery hosts art exhibits and supports residencies that transcend hierarchical boundaries in the Chicago art scene. I’ve been curating and supporting a diverse group of artists though opportunities to make and present new work ever since I completed graduate school at SAIC in 2014. My first exhibit was at my space at MANA Chicago in early 2015, then later both in my home and backyard and in a self-built gallery space in the front section of my studio in Garfield Park. At the start of Uss Gallery, I was in my mid-forties and, in the space of three years, had finally obtained my undergraduate and graduate degrees, after living and working as a non-degreed artist getting by on a disability check and recovering from depression and anxiety. As a veteran artist with a disability, I was acutely aware of the how difficult it can be to access the privilege of an education and obtain a fine-arts degree. I was motived to work towards presenting a view of art-making that was less gate-kept by academic credentials. I noticed that at that time there was a divided social and art-exhibition environment at SAIC between the grads and undergrads. In response, I wanted to curate a group of artists to overcome those divisions. Therefore, my first show at MANA included both graduate and undergraduate students on equal terms. I have continued to work for over the last ten years with the goal of transcending what I see as educational and social boundaries that we as artists face in showing our work and connecting with each other. (See list of programs below and at ussgallery.com). The name of my gallery is based on the ship I was stationed on for four years and on which I was deployed as a radar technician during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, USS Gallery FFG26. I am now a pacifist and devout Buddhist, so I’ve changed the USS to Uss (with lowercase letters) as a way of making a transformative statement about it being less about the military/war and more about people working together, as in Us.
The following is a chronological list of past programs:
Feburary 2015: Rendered In An Idiom Other Than For Scientists. Group show at MANA. Krissy Wilson, Christopher Staats, Carly Ries, Molly M. Brandt, and Ashley Limon.
October 2015: Chris J. Staats, Satellite Space Astra 5 and Breakaway Space Astra 5A. Site-specific sculptural intervention in a closet in my home.
November 2015-January 2018: ALEXANDRIA (GALLERY MAILBOX) Object Exchange, drop-box in my yard for free and open art-exchange based on Little Free Library Concept. Box designed by Christopher J. Staats.
January 2016-January 2017: Antoinette Suiter has installed [telephonePiece] as part of her funded residency in Uss Gallery’s Astra 5 Satellite Space (my spare closet). Interactive artwork and site-specific sculpture with accompanying book.
March 2018: Rocío Azarloza. Accessible sculptural works installed in my yard near gallery mailbox.
July 2018: A Garden of Pomegranates. Group show at the gallery in Garfield Park. billy t, Christopher Staats, Antoinette Suiter,
and Rocío Azarloza.
December 2018-March 2019: Bayesian/Bindle by Amanda Taves. Site-specific work at my house, accompanying book, and photographic prints exhibited at the gallery.
Summer 2023: When They Open The Books. Group show at gallery in Garfield Park. billy t, J. Smith, Gregory Fitzsimmons (Hobo 23), and Chris J Staats.
Summer 2024: Beth Kotz: Love and Chaos. Analog photographic print exhibition at the gallery in Garfield Park.