Off Into the Sunset
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Blue Rider Theatre Company was formed in 1984 by Fiori, Mitch Covic, and Donna Blue Lachman; two years later the partners rented a space in the building at 18th and Halsted that had once housed the Palace Theater. At first Blue Rider served mostly as a vehicle for Lachman’s plays, including a biography of Frida Kahlo and the autobiographical piece After Mountains, More Mountains…the Haiti Stories. Blue Rider was among a handful of organizations trying to transform Pilsen into a thriving arts community; Interplay, Econo-Art Theatre, and the Joseph Holmes Chicago Dance Theatre all operated there, but one by one they either folded or left for greener pastures and then collapsed.
Pornfest’s Big Bust
Richard Kelley has closed his Tough Gallery at 415 N. Sangamon. One of the city’s only commercial spaces devoted to conceptual sculpture and installations by local artists, it featured work by Adelheid Mers, Jo Hormuth, and M.W. Burns, among others. Since Tough opened in 1991, it’s been more a hobby than a job, and Kelley says he no longer has time for it: “I’m overcommitted in other areas right now and haven’t been doing a tremendous job of running the gallery, which isn’t fair to the artists.” Kelley calls the gallery scene “pretty abysmal” and blames the second-city syndrome. “Artists here think you’ve got to go to New York to be successful, so the best always seem to migrate there.”
