For Jose A. Velazco, a recent SAIC grad whose self-portrait in a Mexican wrestling mask made of stars was a crowd favorite, “this whole experience has been surreal. I’ve never had work shown this big and in an outdoor space before.” Like other artists in attendance (whose e-mail addresses were listed alongside their work), he kept checking his inbox to see if anyone had responded or offered to buy his piece, “for maybe a million dollars?”

While many of the works were created independently of Lollapalooza, some, like Chelsea Culp’s installation House that Chelsea Built II, were executed after the proposal was selected. “I felt my work needed to be dark and glamorous for a rock show,” said Culp, another SAIC alumna. “In pop culture, people can grab on to the dark side through rock ’n’ roll, so I wanted my piece to reflect the decay, the underbelly of that world, which is why I chose to work in all black.”  

Student Art Goes Public
One major challenge for Culp and the other artists was the dimension of the project. Few had worked at such a large scale before, and even fewer had produced anything that was intended to be shown as public art. As a result, SAIC is looking to wrap next year’s Lollapalooza exhibition into a public art/practice class so that artists can further tailor their work to the festival environment.

And in a move that would more closely align the themes and goals of the exhibition and the concert, says Ben Blocker, Senior Creative at C3, the event organization company behind Lollapalooza, the festival is considering doubling the size of the student art show next year, and also wants to push the content of the works in an environmental direction.

“This would connect the art more closely to the goals of Lollapalooza,” he said. “We are all about doing a festival in an environmentally responsible way, and if the art can help raise environmental consciousness, it will be that much more powerful.”