CHICAGO— In a city that happens to do both outdoor music festivals and public art exhibitions extremely well, it comes as no surprise that Lollapalooza, the giant alternative rock festival that has made Chicago’s Grant Park its permanent home since 2005, has decided to combine the two. This year’s extravaganza, held August 3 to 5, included an expanded visual-arts section featuring an eclectic array of artworks, from a teahouse constructed entirely of reclaimed objects (reflecting the festival’s eco-consciousness) to a multi-image, semi-hallucinatory slide show inside a geodesic dome.

The headliner, however, was the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s (SAIC) “Who Art Thou?” exhibition, which showcased work from the art school’s students both past and present.

Curated by SAIC alumna Vanessa Smith, the show consisted of four large sculpture installations plus 40 works originally executed in a variety of mediums—including oils, photography, watercolors, and collage—and reproduced on four-by-eight-foot hanging banners. After the festival, some of the banners will be shown in Chicago’s Adams and Wabash El station.

Individually, the pieces reflected the talent and vision of each artist. Collectively, however, they seemed to bear little relationship to each other, which undercut the impact of the exhibition and left viewers confused about its intent. “Most of the pieces I like, but they don’t seem to relate to each other,” said festivalgoer Michael Gibson, 19, from Chicago. “I think having art here adds a visual aspect to the audio, but it needs to feel more connected to the festival itself.”

While others echoed Gibson’s sentiment and expressed a desire for more information about the exhibition, the show had none of the raggedness or hit-or-miss qualities of the average student show. In fact, its uniform professionalism asked viewers to take the work seriously. Typically, festivalgoers wandered into the art area—some out of curiosity, some by accident—and then became enamored with the display. Some even photographed each image.

And because the circular, park-like area allocated to the visual arts was set far enough off the main thoroughfare that one could escape, even for a few moments, the throngs hurrying among the nine stages to catch the next musical act, many visitors viewed it as a quiet oasis in the middle of a festival known for its high-decibel performances. For Chicagoan Melissa Morris, 25, the exhibit offered “a nice break” from the frenzy elsewhere. “This is a nice space, peaceful. I’m glad it’s here.”

Jane Says Include Art
The idea to include art at Lollapalooza came straight from the festival’s godfather and organizer, Perry Farrell, formerly the frontman of Jane’s Addiction, whose vision for the event spans cultural genres and ideas. “Lollapalooza’s mission is to be great and wonderful, to speak to people and speak for the earth, and to embody music’s power to bring people together,” he said in a press release.

After experimenting with a small visual arts section at last year’s Lollapalooza, Farrell contacted the SAIC about expanding its reach and creating a high-quality show featuring today’s emerging talents.

“It made a lot of sense for the school to be involved,” said Smith, “especially since the Lollapalooza venue, Grant Park, is literally the SAIC’s backyard.” The school sent out a general call for entries to all students and alumni. From the initial 150 entries, Smith selected about 80 works, which she sent to Farrell so he and his team could make final decisions.

Art School Influential
Just as Lollapalooza has turned many a relatively unknown musician (see Rhymefest last year) into breakout acts, “Who Art Thou?” offered up-and-coming artists a similar opportunity to reach a large, untapped audience—including many who may not be regulars at art galleries and museum shows. An estimated 160,000 people attended the three-day event, exposure few art students and recent graduates get so early in their careers.

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.”