When Robin Barcus went to be interviewed as a volunteer for an art program at Irene’s, a daytime women’s shelter in Wicker Park where women can create art as a form of therapy, one of the first things she saw was the paintings of Barbara Jean Lindsay. “When I walked into that shelter and I saw her artwork papering the walls,” says Barcus, a 1993 graduate of the School of the Art Institute, “I felt the same way I do when I walk into a gallery and see an artist that really clicks.”
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Lindsay–who for more than ten years has lived at the overnight shelter, Deborah’s Place, that runs Irene’s–constantly adds to her store of sensual and religious paintings, sculptures, and ceramics. “While waiting for one painting to dry she’s working on several ceramic sculptures,” Barcus says. Among those ceramic pieces is a nude Jesus embracing Motown singer Mary Wells, which Lindsay created shortly after Wells’s death to symbolize her welcome into heaven.
Barcus found a Godie collector who allowed her to borrow whatever works she wanted. She also scoured alleyways and thrift shops for chairs that the women at the shelter could paint for the show. And she interviewed Lindsay–who gave answers full of what Barcus calls “poetic ramblings”–for a short biography that would be displayed at the show. Lindsay said she was born 57 years ago in Buffalo, New York, and came to Chicago as a child. Barcus asked her when she began painting, and Lindsay told her, “I have no beginning. It was with me when I came into the world. No beginning and no end–from everlasting to everlasting.”
