Nick Cave Uses His Capital to Help Aspiring Creators

CHICAGO — Stretching across the windows of three conjoined storefronts on the Northwest Side of Chicago is a 70-foot-long mosaic made of 7,000 circular name tags with a mix of red and white backgrounds. They spell out the message “Love Thy Neighbor.” The simple declaration could be read as the mission statement underpinning the activity in the two-story brick building, a new multidisciplinary art space dreamed up by Nick Cave, the artist and educator, and his personal and professional partner, Bob Faust.

“It is our way of introducing ourselves to the community,” said Cave, best known for his dazzling “Soundsuits” that double as full-body sculptures and garments.

Based for more than 20 years on Chicago’s South Loop, this 59-year-old artist has recently consolidated his studio, the couple’s home and Faust’s design studio in this 20,000-square-foot former mason’s workshop in South Old Irving Park, a largely working-class neighborhood across town. Named Facility, the space has been conceived as an incubator for collaboration — to inspire “a young artist’s aspirations or put designers and chefs and dancers in one room and see what using the building as a facility makes,” Faust, 51, said during a tour of their just-renovated ground-floor studio and upstairs residential loft. A cavernous space downstairs could also easily host a fashion show, musical or dance performance.

For the “Love Thy Neighbor” installation, they distributed blank name tags to local businesses, schools and block associations. People wrote in their first names or otherwise embellished them. “They are these amazing little artworks,” Faust said. In the future, those storefront display spaces will host artist exhibitions and pop-up retail for emerging designers, free of charge.

“There are interesting fashion designers that just haven’t had a break, so why not give them a storefront for half a year and have an amazing opening?” Cave said.

“The flux of it all is really what’s interesting for us — it’s how we think,” added the artist, who is funding Facility himself and plans to offer stipends for some of the projects. “There’s a lot we want to do other than our studio practices — bigger work in terms of being more accountable for civic responsibilities.”

Cave has held a tenured position in the fashion, body and garment department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago since 2001 and now teaches two days a week. He spent years scouting sites around Chicago before finding this uninhabited commercial building at the intersection of North Milwaukee and West Addison, and a city official willing to work with him and Faust on zoning changes to allow for residential use as well as production.

Alderman John Arena said he saw their proposal as an economic opportunity that would help attract “businesses and cachet to this blue-collar area.” He led a community meeting where the only concerns raised were over parking. “The folks that came exhibited excitement for the prospect that this could be quite a catalyst for changing the personality of that stretch of roadway and for casual engagement with an artist of his stature,” Arena said of Cave.

Heather Yutzy, principal of the nearby Belding Elementary School, had never heard of Nick Cave. But she was taken with the concept of the “Love Thy Neighbor” project and had her 600 students each decorate a name tag as a back-to-school activity. “I wanted our children to be a part of transforming an area that needs a lift,” Yutzy said, “so they could walk over and say, ‘Look, we helped do that.'”

The spirit behind Facility resonates with another ambitious artist-run project investing in an underserved neighborhood of the city, said Naomi Beckwith, senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, referring to Theaster Gates’ Rebuild Foundation on Chicago’s South Side.

“What they’re both asking is: Can I as an individual bring some of the social capital and financial capital that I’ve acquired in my life to somewhere outside the [city] center, so that those who do not have access to the center, or don’t feel comfortable there, can still have an encounter with art,” Beckwith said. Facility is part of a broader shift for Cave, who for two decades has been closely associated with his crowd-pleasing “Soundsuits,” acquired by many museums. “They’re always going to be part of my practice,” he said, while noting that in recent exhibitions at Mass MoCA and the Jack Shainman gallery, no “Soundsuits” were included. “Wanting to move forward, it’s about how do you transfer the essence of that work,” he said.

One of seven brothers raised in Missouri by his mother after his father’s early death, Cave received his BFA in 1982 at the Kansas City Art Institute in Missouri and studied dance at Alvin Ailey summer programs. As the only African-American graduate student at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan in the late 1980s, he described having the feeling of being a “black male” for the first time.

Cave made his first “Soundsuit” in 1992 in response to the police beating of Rodney King. The figural sheath made of twigs was a form of protection that obscured race, class and gender, and made a striking noise when worn. To date, he has made more than 500, ever more flamboyant.

“I have to feel like this looks,” he said, pointing to a “Soundsuit” covered in exuberantly colored synthetic hair in his studio. He is interested in the power of these fantastical second skins, both for the people wearing them in performances and for the viewer. He would like to think their visual seduction will “unify and set us all in a room together for difficult conversations,” he said. Cave said the most meaningful part of his work in recent years has been collaborating with underprivileged children on “Soundsuit” performances. “It’s almost like a rite of passage,” he said, recalling how they learn to stand up and move in these 40-pound armatures that can make people look — and feel — like shamans.

What he calls “the brutality” in all his work will be laid bare in his new show, “If a Tree Falls,” opening Nov. 1 at Jack Shainman in Chelsea. It is filled with darkly monochromatic works referring to gun violence devastating African-American communities. A long, low platform teeming with black hands cradling carved wooden heads evokes a mass grave. Fragments of arms in bronze protrude from the walls; they are draped with funeral wreaths. For children growing up in these communities, he said, “somebody gets shot, but nobody’s talking about it.”

A goal of Facility is to find more ways to influence young people. Cave and Faust are collaborating with students and teachers at Schurz High School, across the street, on a 70-foot-long fence made from recycled shipping containers running along the south side of Facility. The art department and a group of students will design imagery. “It’s going to be very guerrilla-like, all spray paint,” Cave said.

The men plan to charge a small fee to art groups requesting tours of the studio, which will go toward a scholarship fund for projects with young artists. Tony Karman, director of Expo Chicago, the international art exhibition, said he anticipates “there will be huge interest from collectors and curators and arts professionals,” given Cave’s stature.

Cave will exhibit his extensive personal art collection here for the first time — works by Kerry James Marshall, Beverly McIver, Titus Kaphar and Kehinde Wiley. “It’s going to feed creativity,” he said.

Cave now often buys work from his students. “I remember someone bought a piece of mine when I was an undergrad,” he said. “That validation and motivation — it’s just what that does to a young person.”