By Jeff Huebner
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Marks, who grew up in South Shore, was five when his father, a sometime horn player, began teaching him how to play the piano. But his father didn’t want him to make a living at music; he wanted him to be a “nice Jewish doctor.” Marks rebelled, enrolling at Oberlin College, then dropping out in 1974 to travel around Europe. He worked as a farmhand in Denmark, where he also attended a performing arts school. “I not only had to learn a language, but I also had to learn how to slop hogs, drive a tractor, and harvest fields.”
He returned to Chicago briefly to work as a medical data entry clerk and gig with his dad at bar mitzvahs and in hotel lounges, then headed overseas again. Determined to be a composer, he wanted to expand his artistic horizons, get some worldly experience. He hung out for a while in Denmark again and then, nearly broke, drifted to Frankfurt, Germany.
Eventually business picked up, and in the 1980s Marks tripled his space, renting the storefronts on either side of him. A longing for stability led him to relocate to Wicker Park, where he bought the building at 1528 N. Milwaukee. “The neighborhood was still a little funky then, and it was a roach-infested, falling-down tenement.”
Marks has already lined up events for the next three months: part of the Asian American Showcase in April, portraits and constructions by Douglas Philips in May, and an exhibit of artwork by employees of Terry Dowd, an art-moving firm, in June. “People don’t have to be famous artists or have a track record, but they have to convince me of their ability to conceptualize, execute, market, and follow through,” says Marks. “My store was incredibly eclectic, but it still had an integrity, a feeling. I want people to know that if something goes on here it will have merit.” He pauses. “We’ll see how it progresses. At the very least, it’ll be interesting.”
