Tracy Kostenbader

Thanks Brett Swinney for this photo from Against Da Fence. It is bittersweet as Project Logan is being demolished. We are smiling to not cry. Last week’s Against Da Fence event was a great day and probably the last public event with Project Logan standing as more walls get chewed down by heavy machinery.

AnySquared Spotlight Art Talk with Tracy Kostenbader. Brett Swinney guest hosted! See full series of art talks on AnySquared Projects YouTube (@anysquared)

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ABOUT TRACY KOSTENBADER tracykostenbader.com or IG: @tracykostenbader tracykostenbader.com

Tracy Kostenbader is a visual and social artist who co-founded AnySquared as an artist collaborative in 2010 to develop art projects with others in rejection of an elitist view of art and institutions. Functioning on the basic premise of mutual aid and cooperation, Tracy has also helped build a unique organization and space in Chicago where people come from all over the city to participate and build projects together.

She transformed her home studio to make space for other artists where people can interact and produce art together. Tracy has been hosting AnySquared’s studio days more than a decade and mentors emerging artists to expand their ideas about how to create their work.

In AnySquared, she spearheads collaborations with a network of artists and groups and brings people together. She leads visual arts projects where participants are included in the process of designing and producing them. She creates arts programming, curates exhibitions, and nurtures others to also become arts organizers and make more challenging arts projects.

Tracy’s philosophy is rooted in collaboration. Her history of work with social justice campaigns has a profound effect on her ideas as an artist. Working together is the underpinning of AnySquared.

While producing collaborative projects, Tracy has maintained her own art practice. She explores personal and political themes with paintings, drawings, and digital images.

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LIP 20/20 exhibition | March 7–28, 2020 Hairpin Arts Center, 2810 N. Milwaukee, Chicago LIP = Life in Progress #LIP2020

CALL FOR ARTISTS! Visit website for LIP Call for requirements > Deadline January 22, 2020 Open to artists in Chicago and the Surroundings Area Accepting Submissions for | Painting, Drawing, Photography, Sculpture, Installation, Interactive Piece, Video, Performance, Spoken Word, Music, and Sound as well as Workshop Proposals. ____

For questions about the exhibition or application, email [email protected].

Check it out: AnySquared's Tracy Kostenbader joined Trixter on S.H.E. Gallery's CAN TV show on January 28, 2019

“Violate,” “Incubate,” and “Liberate” (Eating Words series) 2018, three double-sided hanging banners: 25.5” X 62” each (with their backs shown), acrylic and spray paint on sewn canvas.

Installation Shot of June 2018 "Eating Words" Exhibition at Agitator Gallery. For most of my art practice, I have been producing work with images of objects and often, combine the images with words. In a previous exhibition in 2007 titled “UN/Useful,” I combined “un” words with tools, hardware, and instructional diagrams. In the “Eating Words” series, I utilize words that end in letters a-t-e with images of eating utensils to express dialogues of negative, positive, and transitional ideas. I have continued to make works utilizing words/images both as a path to reflect on the horrors that dine on people in the current world, as well as a meditation on a future where people get the actual resources/sustenance needed in a better one. Each of the three banners, Violate, Incubate, and Liberate, reflect steps in the process we go through to change the world and heal. The banners are reinterpretations of four mini-banners I originally made in 2012.

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Tracy Kostenbader lives in Chicago and is founder, lead artist, producer, and principal curator of AnySquared Projects.

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