Bad at Sports
Bad At Sports is a weekly podcast about contemporary art. Founded in 2005, the series focuses on presenting the practices of artists, curators, critics, dealers, and various other arts professionals through an online audio format.
Episodes
Bad at Sports Episode 976: Tony Lewis and Bosco Bae
Duncan MacKenzie and Jesse Malmed sit down with artist Tony Lewis and Bosco Bae, brother of the late Chicago artist Gregory Bae (1986–2021), for a moving, funny, and candid conversation recorded live at PATRON Gallery in Chicago. The occasion is Let's Go Exploring!, a two-person exhibition bringing together work by longtime friends and studio mates Tony Lewis and Gregory Bae. But what begins as a
Bad at Sports Episode 975: Paul Nudd
Brian Andrews, Duncan MacKenzie, and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with Chicago-area artist Paul Nudd at Spudnik Press, surrounded by the work of the 1st International Milwaukee Riso Invitational. Nudd has spent more than two decades producing a gloriously strange universe of hairy organisms, mutant bodies, psychedelic biological forms, and wonderfully unsettling surfaces. His work moves between pain
Bad at Sports Episode 974: Mari Eastman
What makes a painting worth saving? What happens when the image in your head refuses to become the image on your panel? And why does everybody want another fox? This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie, Brian Andrews, and Ryan Peter Miller welcome Chicago painter Mari Eastman for a conversation recorded at Spudnik Press during its Riso Print Fest. Eastman takes us through the pleasures and fru
Bad at Sports Episode 973: Manuel Mathieu
What do you do when your hope for the future starts to feel fragile? And what can a painting, an act of remembrance, or a bottle of perfume do about it? Duncan MacKenzie sits down with Haitian-born artist Manuel Mathieu at Calgary's Esker Foundation for a conversation that moves between studio practice and the world beyond it. They begin with Mathieu's presentation at the 2026 Venice Biennale, inc
Bad at Sports Episode 972: Jeanette Andrews
Artist and magician Jeanette Andrews joins Duncan and Jesse at the Elmhurst Art Museum, the very place where, as a teenager, she began imagining how magic could become contemporary art. Nearly twenty years later, that ambition has become an exhibition. The conversation travels from Victorian parlor magic and vaudeville to the psychology of surprise, Alan Turing, and Andrews's Taken by Artificial
Bad at Sports Episode 971: Jean Alexander Frater, Matthew Girson & Dana DeGiulio at Material
What can eight small paintings tell us about the possibilities of an artist-run space? Duncan MacKenzie, joined midway by Jesse Malmed, speaks with Jean Alexander Frater, Matthew Girson, and Dana DeGiulio about a two-person exhibition at Material, Jean's artist-run project space in Chicago's Roscoe Village. Four paintings by Matthew and four by Dana are installed in an alternating sequence, settin
Bad at Sports Episode: 970 - A P(o)or(t)ch Theater with Mark Jeffery, Judd Morrissey and Kristin Mariani
At Spudnik Press in Chicago, Duncan MacKenzie, Brian Andrews and Ryan Peter Miller welcome Mark Jeffery, Judd Morrissey and Kristin Mariani to discuss the Poor Farm Experiment's Leopold Benches: A P(o)or(t)ch Theater (MIDWEST REDUX). Developed through the U.S. Pavilion's PORCH program at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale and presented in Chicago at the MCA's Chicago Performs festival, the work
Bad at Sports Episode 969: Abby Pucker and Chanelle Lacy... It's Cool to Care?
What if the problem with Chicago's art world isn't a shortage of artists, galleries, institutions, or ideas—but a shortage of connective tissue? This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie sits down at the Gertie Hub with Gertie founder Abby Pucker and Head of Programming, Partnerships & Membership Chanelle Lacy for a conversation about building audiences, building collectors, and building cultur
Bad at Sports Episode 968: Abigail Winograd and Dieter Roelstraete — It's About Time
What if the most radical thing an artist can do right now is… take their time? This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with curators Abigail Winograd and Dieter Roelstraete, a.k.a. DRAW, to talk about their recent GRAY Chicago exhibition, IT'S ABOUT TIME: Counterproductive Conceptualisms in Chicago. Originally conceived under the much more dangerous title "Slacker C
Bad at Sports Episode 967: Georgia Kotretsos with Daniel Tucker
Blurb: Daniel Tucker interviews Georgia Kotretsos about her work with the ΤΗΕ ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY which is conceived of as a Arts & Culture Research Lab Observatorium with projects throughout Greece and beyond. This interview was conducted at the Twenty-First International Conference on the Arts in Society conference "Modeling Life Systems: Art, Algorithms, Ecologies" at the National and Kapodistrian
Bad at Sports Episode 966: Claire Ashley
Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with artist Claire Ashley at the Door County Contemporary Art Fair for a conversation that wanders from broken-down minivans to Scottish standing stones, from inflatable sculpture to protest aesthetics, and from the economics of artistic survival to the philosophy of color. Ashley discusses nearly two decades of building monumental inflatable sculptures
Bad at Sports Episode 965: Jaymee Harvey Willms
Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with artist, curator, arts administrator, and Door County Contemporary co-founder Jaymee Harvey Willms for an unexpectedly personal and funny conversation. What begins as a discussion about goats unfolds into an exploration of grief, religious deconstruction, contemporary art, and the rituals we create to survive profound loss. Once a painter immersed in
Bad at Sports Episode 964: Jenal Dolson
Duncan MacKenzie, Ryan Peter Miller, and Brian Andrews are joined by painter Jenal Dolson for a conversation recorded live from the Door County Contemporary Art Fair in Wisconsin. Dolson discusses her vividly textured paintings, her installation practice, and the role of touch, memory, and sensory experience in shaping the visual language of her work. The conversation ranges from tactile abstracti
Bad at Sports Episode 963: Tyson Reeder
Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller finally welcome painter, educator, and perennial instigator Tyson Reeder to Bad at Sports. Recorded during Door County Contemporary Art Fair, the discussion wanders through the history of Milwaukee's DIY art scene, the legendary Dark Fair, artist-run culture, teaching, painting, collaboration, and the productive tension between sincerity and absurdity. Reeder
Bad at Sports Episode 962: Sophia Chai
This week Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with artist Sophia Chai at the Door County Contemporary Art Fair to discuss photography that insists on becoming something else. Working between painting, sculpture, installation, and large-format analog photography, Chai creates images that challenge our assumptions about perspective, representation, and the mechanics of seeing itself. The co
Bad at Sports Episode 961: Tanner MacArthur
Tanner MacArthur joins Bad at Sports live from Door County Contemporary for a conversation that begins with secret fry sauce recipes and somehow ends with the shape of Delaware as a sandwich-eating methodology. MacArthur discusses his dual role as both artist and gallerist through his Milwaukee project space, Addendum, founded alongside James Stepanek as an extension of No Instructions Gallery. Th
Bad at Sports Episode 960: Shane Walsh
This episode on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie, Ryan Peter Miller, and Brian Andrews sit down with artist, organizer, and Door County Contemporary co-founder Shane Walsh at the close of another sunny and slightly delirious weekend in Door County. The conversation ranges from the growth of the Door County Contemporary fair, the peculiar magic of creating a temporary art community in Wisconsin, and
Bad at Sports Episode 959: Shane McAdams
This week Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller head north to the Door County Contemporary Art Fair to sit down with artist, curator, writer, gallerist, and all-around art evangelist Shane McAdams. Broadcasting from a gazebo in Door County, Wisconsin, the conversation ranges from the weather, custard, and pontoon boats to larger questions about why contemporary art struggles to reach broader publ
Bad at Sports Episode 958: Rafael Salas
This week Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with artist and educator Rafael Salas for a wide-ranging conversation about rural Wisconsin, magical realism, county fairs, country music, identity, and the contested landscapes of contemporary America. Salas discusses growing up in rural Wisconsin, returning to the Midwest after years in New York, and how his paintings inhabit a space betw
Bad at Sports Episode 957: Andrew Rafacz
Recorded live at Door County Contemporary, Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller finally correct a seventeen-year oversight and sit down with Chicago gallerist Andrew Rafacz. From the Bucket Rider days in Pilsen to twenty-five years of building a gallery practice rooted in friendship, advocacy, and weird Midwestern generosity, Rafacz reflects on Chicago's changing art scene, the pressures of art
Bad at Sports Episode 956: Phoenix Brown
This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with Milwaukee-based artist, curator, musician, and all-around multi-hyphenate Phoenix Brown. The conversation begins with Phoenix's drawings in the Portrait Society exhibition and quickly expands into vulnerability, symbolism, self-healing, lizards from Italy, Midwestern art communities, music, curatorial practice, and th
Bad at Sports Episode 955: Mindy Rose Schwartz
This week on Bad at Sports, Brian Andrews, Ryan Peter Miller, and Duncan MacKenzie sit down with Chicago artist Mindy Rose Schwartz to discuss Countersealed, her recent exhibition at M. LeBlanc Gallery. The conversation explores a deeply immersive exhibition built around ceramic scorpions emerging from cracks in the gallery floor, glowing bronze aliens, reconstructed fur animals, monumental incens
Bad at Sports Episode 954: Heather Mekkelson
This week on Bad at Sports, Brian Andrews and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with Chicago artist Heather Mekkelson to discuss her recent paired exhibitions, Bass Note at 65GRAND and Snare at Boundary. Across two installations separated by nearly sixteen miles of Chicago, Mekkelson transforms obsolete communication technologies into sprawling sculptural environments wrapped in jute. The conversation ex
Bad at Sports Episode 953: George Scheer
Executive Director of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, former co-founder of Elsewhere Museum, printmaking evangelist, institutional theorist, and recovering residency founder George Scheer joins Duncan and Ryan for a sprawling conversation about artist-centered institutions, the legacy of Robert Blackburn, socially engaged practice, the economics of DIY arts infrastructures, and what happens
Bad at Sports Episode 952: Tali Halpern
Bad at Sports Episode 951 has Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller still in Miami for a conversation with Chicago artist Tali Halpern at NADA, representing 1210 Gallery. The conversation spans weaving, sobriety, punk music, queer identity, labor, spectacle, and the ecstatic possibilities of fiber art. Halpern discusses their transition from painting and addiction into weaving, their work with di
Bad at Sports Episode 951: William Powhida
At NADA Miami, Duncan MacKenzie, Ryan Peter Miller, Tom Sandford and returning guest William Powhida dig into the art world's annual power rituals, the shifting geography of cultural influence, Gulf-state biennials, wealth concentration, and the contradictions of contemporary art's relationship to capitalism. Starting from Powhida's commissioned work for the annual ArtReview Power 100 issue, the c
Bad at Sports Episode 950: Justin H Long
Bad at Sports Episode 947: Justin H. Long Live from the fair circuit heat (not Miami… but spiritually always Miami), Duncan MacKenzie, Ryan Peter Miller, and Tom Sanford catch up with artist Justin H. Long, self-described "original Florida man," to talk boats, comedy, identity, and the strange poetics of nautical culture. Long's sculptural practice moves between deadpan humor and conceptual rigor:
Bad at Sports Episode 949: Hilde Lynn Helphenstein
I don't quite know how to start this. It feels important to repost this interview because of Hilde. Hilde Lynn Helpenstein was a kickass human. "Jerry Gogosian" was a lance aimed directly at our pretensions and self-importance. Through Jerry, Hilde developed an incisive understanding of how the art world works. She created a space where many of us felt seen, derided, embarrassed, challenged, or si
Bad at Sports Episode 948: Esther Park
In this episode of Bad at Sports, recorded at the tail end of a sun-soaked, sweat-drenched, and somehow still magical Miami Art Week, Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with curator and cultural programmer Esther Park—the force behind this year's public programming at New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA). Park traces her origin story from working the front desk at the Museum of Contemporar
Bad at Sports Episode 947: Heather Hubbs
Recorded live in the blazing Miami heat (seriously, surface-of-the-sun conditions), Duncan, Ryan, and crew sit down with Heather Hubbs, Executive Director of the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA), for a conversation about art fairs, artist ecosystems, and what it actually means to build a sustainable contemporary art community. From CBD waters and early-morning whiskey to global art economies and th
Bad at Sports Episode 946: Chris Succo
Chris Succo joins Duncan MacKenzie, Ryan Peter Miller, and Tom Sanford in Miami for a conversation that slides easily from pronunciation jokes into a deep dive on abstraction, immediacy, and the quiet, often unspoken labor of sustaining an art practice. Succo unpacks a studio logic built on contradiction: paintings that feel fast but are deeply considered, surfaces that appear minimal but hold lay
Bad at Sports Episode 945: Dreamsong Gallery
Recorded in the sunburnt delirium of Miami, Duncan and crew stumble out of the Midwest and into the heat of the fairs, only to find a familiar sensibility in an unexpected place: Dreamsong. Rebecca Heidenberg joins the conversation to talk about building a gallery ecosystem in Minneapolis that resists isolation and instead fosters dialogue between regional artists and those working in larger art c
Bad at Sports Episode 944: Amy Kligman
Recorded live at NADA Art Fair, this episode finds the crew in full fair-mode: cramped booths, warm beverages, and the particular energy of artists, curators, and dealers trying to make something real happen in public. Joining the conversation is Amy Kligman, founder of Special Effects Gallery, a Kansas City–based gallery barely out of the gate and already showing at fairs. Alongside Tom Sanford,
Bad at Sports Episode 943: Nanako Kono and Olivia Zubko
From the humid chaos of Miami Art Week, Bad at Sports drops into the garden at NADA for a conversation with two artists from Western Exhibitions: Nanako Kono and Olivia Zubkov. A loose, funny, and surprisingly thoughtful discussion about painting that isn't painting, sculpture that remembers your body, and bathrooms as sites of intimacy, memory, and quiet surveillance. Nanako walks through her hyp
Bad at Sports Episode 942: Embajada Gallery
Recorded live at NADA Art Fair, Episode 942 features a deeply generous conversation with gallerist and artist Christopher Rivera—founder of Embajada ("Embassy") Gallery in Puerto Rico. Joined by hosts Ryan Peter Miller, Tom Sanford, and William "Bill" Pereda, Rivera discusses artist-led infrastructures, building a gallery as a political and conceptual project, and the evolving ecosystem of Puerto
Bad at Sports Episode 941: Myra Greene
Recorded live in Atlanta at the Art Papers Symposium at Ponce City Market, Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with artist, educator, and department chair Myra Greene for a conversation on materiality, identity, and the long arc from photography to textiles to weaving. The conversation centers on practice as evolution, about what happens when an artist refuses to stay in one lane, and abou
Bad at Sports Episode 940: Emily Llamazales
Recorded live during the Art Papers Symposium in Atlanta, Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with artist Emily Llamazales to talk speculative biology, adaptive futures, and sculptural ecosystems that feel equal parts laboratory experiment and sci-fi relic. Emily's work merges biochemistry, ecology, and material experimentation into immersive sculptural forms that hover between organism an
Bad at Sports Episode 939: Sarah Higgins
Art Papers, Fire Ecology, and Ending Well This week on Bad at Sports, we sit down in Atlanta with Sarah Higgins, Executive and Artistic Director of Art Papers, during the Art Papers symposium. What unfolds is a candid, generous, and surprisingly hopeful conversation about what it means to end something well. As Art Papers approaches its final chapter after nearly 50 years, Higgins lays out a model
Bad at Sports Episode 938: Tori Tinsley
Recorded live at the Art Papers Symposium in Atlanta, this episode features a deeply personal and wide-ranging conversation with Tori Tinsley. Joined by Brian Andrews and Duncan MacKenzie, Tinsley reflects on caregiving, grief, motherhood, and the evolution of her "hug" figures across painting, sculpture, and animation. Her practice emerges from lived experience, particularly her mother's diagnosi
Bad at Sports Episode 937: Nato Thompson
This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie, Brian Andrews, and Abigail Satinsky sit down with Nato Thompson for a conversation that spans collapsing institutions, alternative economies, and what it actually means to sustain a life in art. Recorded in the context of an art fair ecosystem that increasingly blurs community, commerce, and survival, Thompson reflects on his path from Creative Time to
Bad at Sports Episode 936: Damon Locks
Locks' exhibition operates as a split composition: the back gallery leans into layered, exploratory collage rooted in his teaching experience with Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project at Stateville Correctional Center, while the front gallery delivers sharper, declarative works built around text and figuration. The conversation frames this as a kind of A-side / B-side logic, with one space
Bad at Sports Episode 935: Chicago Critics Roundtable
Guests: Annette LePique, Curtis Anthony Bozif, Pia Singh, Gareth Kaye Recorded with the support of Columbia College Chicago - Colum.edu What happens when you gather a room full of critics in a moment when criticism itself feels both endangered and newly alive? In this long-awaited return to the Chicago Critics Roundtable, Duncan sits down with a new multi-hyphenate crew of writers, curators, artis
Bad at Sports Episode 934: John Stezaker
Recorded at Gray Gallery This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie, Brian Andrews, and Ryan Peter Miller, sit down with legendary British artist John Stezaker inside the unexpectedly elegant library at Gray Gallery. The conversation centers on Stezaker's recent exhibition RAFT and expands into a wide-ranging meditation on collage, photography, landscape, and the strange psychological terrain "
Bad at Sports Episode 933: Kate Sierzputowski and EXPO Chicago 2026
This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with Kate Sierzputowski to talk about the evolving identity of EXPO Chicago under Frieze and what 2026 signals for the fair, the city, and the Midwest at large. Now Director of EXPO, Sierzputowski reflects on scaling up leadership while doubling down on care for Chicago's ecosystem. The 2026 edition marks a shift toward a mo
Bad at Sports Episode 932: Michi Meko
Recorded at the Art Papers Fire Ecology Symposium, Atlanta Atlanta artist Michi Meko joins Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews during Art Papers' symposium weekend for a wide-ranging conversation that moves from southern port cities and landscape painting to pandemic solitude, mental health, and the strange spiritual work of making art. Meko discusses his exhibition So Black and So Blue, a body of
Bad at Sports Episode 931: Berenice Vargas Bravo and Krystal Lemonias
Recorded during Miami art week at NADA, Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with artists Berenice Vargas Bravo and Krystal Lemonias to talk about painting, fiber, migration, labor, and the strange textures of building an art practice across borders. Vargas Bravo and Lemonias both arrived at NADA through Andrew Rafacz Gallery, but their paths into the fair and into the United States are
Bad at Sports Episode 930: Antonio Darden
Recorded in Atlanta during the Art Papers symposium: Fire Ecology Artist Antonio Darden joins Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews in Atlanta, where the conversation opens with one of the most arresting images in Darden's recent work: an alien laid out on an autopsy table. What begins as a discussion of a strange installation quickly unfolds into a deeply personal exploration of grief, memory, and t
Bad at Sports Episode 929: Dan Attoe
Recorded on the fly during art fair week, live at NADA, this conversation with Dan Attoe moves from metal-kid origin stories to Zen meditation, daily practice, tattooing, landscape painting, and the unexpected turn toward writing a horror novel. Duncan opens with a personal note: a Dan Attoe painting has been hanging in his home for 22 years, a wedding gift that quietly embedded itself into the fa
Bad at Sports Episode 928: Robert Burnier
Recorded live at the Stony Island Arts Bank with the Chicago Architecture Biennial Robert Burnier joins Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews for a wide-ranging conversation that moves between sculpture, drawing, divination systems, urban planning, Mondrian, Agnes Martin, and the politics of place. Known for his bent and torsioned aluminum works—objects that hold gesture, decision, and duration in th
Bad at Sports Episode 927: Alfred Steiner
Recorded in Miami during art fair week: Alfred Steiner joins Bad at Sports live from Miami, arriving by bicycle from the beach in full cowboy boots and jeans, already soaked through and fully inside the psychic weather of art fair week. A painter, conceptual artist, and practicing intellectual property lawyer, Steiner brings a rare combination of market fluency, legal clarity, and genuine ar
Bad at Sports Episode 926: Gabriel Barcia-Colombo
Gabriel Barcia-Colombo Recorded at the Stony Island Arts Bank during the Chicago Architecture Biennial Gabriel Barcia-Colombo joins Bad at Sports from a rain-soaked tailgate outside the Stony Island Arts Bank, in the middle of Chicago Architecture Biennial programming and an open-hours weekend that turns the city into both subject and stage. A media artist whose work consistently center
Bad at Sports Episode 925: Nicholas DiLeonardi (Gitler&_____)
Nicholas DiLeonardi (Gitler&_____) Recorded in Miami during art fair week Nicholas DiLeonardi joins Bad at Sports from the middle of Miami art fair week, not from a booth but from the pavement between them. Assistant Director and consultant at Gitler&_____, DiLeonardi spends the week moving between fairs, collectors, hammocks, robot dogs, and banana sightings, offering a ground-level view of
Bad at Sports Episode 924: Hilde Lynn Helphenstein is Jerry G part 2
In Part 2 of the Hilde Lynn Helphenstein (Jerry Gogosian) conversation, the discussion turns raw, vulnerable, and deeply structural. Hilde speaks candidly about burnout, public vilification, online pile-ons, and the emotional cost of living as a persona inside an unforgiving attention economy. She describes losing followers overnight, being labeled with extreme political accusations, and watching
Bad at Sports Episode 923:Jerry Gagosian aka Hilde Lynn Helphenstein Part 1
At NADA Miami 2025, Bad at Sports' Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with Hilde Lynn Helphenstein, better known to most of the art world as meme-lord and art-world agent provocateur Jerry Gogosian. In a conversation that swings between dead serious and totally unhinged, Hilde traces the unlikely origin story of Jerry: a near-fatal tick bite in Hudson, NY; weeks in the ICU where she w
Bad at Sports Episode 922: Andi Crist
Recorded at the Stony Island Arts Bank / Chicago Architecture Biennial tailgate In this wild, funny, and unexpectedly heartfelt tailgate episode, the Bad at Sports crew — Duncan MacKenzie, Brian Andrews, Ryan Peter Miller, and Jesse Malmed — sit down with sculptor and arts worker Andi Crist in front of the Stony Island Arts Bank during the Chicago Architecture Biennial. The conversation moves flu
Bad at Sports: Episode 921 – Lori Waxman
Recorded live at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago / CAB Tailgate In this live MCA tailgate episode, the Bad at Sports crew — Duncan MacKenzie, Ryan Peter Miller, Brian Andrews, and Jesse Malmed — sit down with Chicago Tribune and Hyperallergic critic Lori Waxman to dig into the past, present, and uncertain future of art criticism. Lori Waxman speaks candidly about being one of the last re
Bad at Sports Episode: 920 Tony Lewis
Recorded live at the CAB6 × MCA Tailgate This episode was recorded as part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB6) activation on the plaza of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, where Bad at Sports staged a series of open-air interviews, community dialogues, and tailgate-style broadcasts. Artists, architects, students, and the public intersected in a shared social space designed for po
Bad at Sports Episode 919: Kohler, Throckmorton, and Grabner
This week, Bad at Sports hits the road and heads north to Sheboygan and Kohler, Wisconsin — where art, industry, and community collide. We drop into the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) and the Kohler Arts/Industry Residency program to see how a small Midwestern town sustains one of the most ambitious intersections of art and manufacturing in the country. Michelle Grabner and Jodi Throckmor
Bad at Sports Episode 918: Amanda Ross-Ho
This week we sit down with Amanda Ross-Ho, whose large-scale sculptures, staged environments, and uncanny translations of domestic and studio life have made her a vital presence in contemporary art. Recorded in Chicago around her latest exhibition, the conversation spans everything from monumental t-shirts to the politics of labor, and from the intimacy of the studio to the spectacle of the art fa
Bad at Sports Episode 917: Two Palms and Alex Slattery
This week, we print big or go home. Bad at Sports cast their eyes to New York from the safe confines of the Chicago Architectural Biennial booth at EXPO 2025 to talk with the legendary Two Palms studio in the guise of Alex Slattery. If you've ever stood slack-jawed in front of a monoprint the size of a small car or a woodblock cut so large it needed its own logistics plan, chances are Two Palms
Bad at Sports Episode 916: Alex Ross and two fan boys
Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller drive up to the Dunn Museum in Libertyville, IL to talk with legendary comics painter Alex Ross. Known for Marvels, Kingdom Come, and decades of redefining superhero realism, Ross reflects on his career trajectory, his education at the American Academy of Art, his influences (from Neal Adams to Dave McKean), his early breaks with Now Comics and Leo Burnett st
Bad at Sports Episode 915 – Kenny Schachter and Bianca Bova: From Autodidact to Art World Outsider
In Part Two of our late-night conversation, Bad at Sports digs deeper into the remarkable trajectory of Kenny Schachter. From law school dropout to autodidact philosopher, from Sotheby's bidder to artist and teacher, Schachter traces the unlikely path that brought him into the heart of the art world — a place he insists remains strangely conservative despite all its pretenses of progress. The dis
Bad at Sports Episode 914 – Kenny Schachter: Chickens, Auctions, and Foundries (Part 1)
This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller find themselves in Chicago with curator Bianca Bova and the indefatigable Kenny Schachter — artist, writer, teacher, collector, and provocateur. What begins as a conversation about Schachter's exhibition at Old Friends Gallery — featuring chicken-assisted artworks and bronze casts forged in Slovenia — quickly expands into a medita
Bad at Sports Episode 913: Shannon R. Stratton and Ox-Bow
This week, Bad at Sports reconnects with one of Chicago's most beloved curators and cultural instigators Ox-Bow School of Art's Executive Director, Shannon Stratton. From founding Threewalls to serving as Chief Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York, Stratton's career is a masterclass in weaving together artists, audiences, and institutions. We talk about building spaces for ex
Bad at Sports Episode 912: Ben Davis
This week Bad at Sports goes full meta, talking about talking about art. We sit down with Ben Davis, National Art Critic for Artnet News and author of 9.5 Theses on Art and Class, to unpack the state of art criticism in 2025. Davis has been one of the sharpest voices charting the relationship between culture, economics, and media—at once insider, outsider, and always keeping his mom in mind. F
Bad at Sports Episode 911: Edra Soto and Dan Sullivan
Recorded live from the Chicago Architectural Biennial's booth at EXPO Chicago, Bad at Sports tailgates with artist Edra Soto and designer Dan Sullivan—Chicago's unofficial art-world power couple. Soto unpacks her first solo art fair booth at Engage Projects, where monoblock plastic chairs, airbrushed T-shirts, and Puerto Rican vernacular architecture collide with memory, loss, and celebration. S
Bad at Sports Episode 910: CAB 6 – Dirk Denison, David Salkin, and Jennifer Armetta
In this lively and insightful episode, Bad at Sports hosts a roundtable conversation with Dirk Denison (Founding Board Member of the Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB)), David Salkin (Designer, Curator, and Board Husband), and Jennifer Armetta (Executive Director of the CAB). Together, they reflect on the impact and legacy of the Chicago Architecture Biennial and its shifting forms of experimenta
Bad at Sports Episode 909: Paul Pfeiffer
We meet Paul Pfeiffer inside his retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago to talk about ghosts, spectacle, and the metaphysics of sports. Known for erasing athletes from footage and turning stadiums into stages of worship, Pfeiffer opens up about boxing as performance, the haunted loop of fandom, and building media rituals in the Philippines. Also: parrots, Deion Sanders, lip sync
Bad at Sports Episode 908: Rachel Adams and the Bemis Art Center
We sit down with curator Rachel Adams to talk about institutional evolution, artists as infrastructure, and how curatorial practice shifts between museums and biennials. Rachel reflects on working with artists like Cauleen Smith, Liz Magic Laser, and Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, the power of slow curation, and why she's drawn to hybrid spaces that defy the market. Along the way: phantom titles, artist
Bad at Sports Episode 907: A Hubris of Irish Curators
We sit down with a delegation of Irish curators—Michele Horrigan (Askeaton Contemporary Arts), Michael Hill (Temple Bar Gallery + Studios), and Mark O'Gorman (The Complex)—to unpack what it means to build artist-centered institutions on an island without a commercial art market. From weather-worn banana warehouses to smoke-machine-filled nightclubs, these curators share space-making tactics, post-
Bad at Sports Episode 906: Jaqueline Cedar & Josh Dihle
Live from Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago In this intimate, laughter-filled episode recorded live at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Duncan and Ryan sit down with artists Jaqueline Cedar and Josh Dihle on the occasion of their concurrent solo exhibitions. The conversation traverses everything from Duchampian bathroom jokes to model train nostalgia, parenthood, masculinity, and why drawing still matters.
Bad at Sports Episode 905: The REAL Joey Orr!
Live from the tailgate lounge at Chicago Architectural Biennial 6's booth at Expo Chicago, Duncan and Ryan welcome Joey Orr, the newly appointed Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the MCA Chicago. In this densely brilliant and surprisingly hilarious conversation, Orr discusses what it means to steer a contemporary art institution in an era of deep social complexity, political polarization, and
Bad at Sports Episode 904: Caitlin McGurk and Brian Baynes
Broadcast live from Rice University (yes, in Houston), this episode of Bad at Sports brings together the curator of comics and cartoon art at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum, Caitlin McGurk, and the Richmond-based zine publisher and comics obsessive behind Bubbles Fanzine, Brian Baynes. We dive deep into McGurk's new book Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art
Bad at Sports Episode 903: Jake Nickell & Lance Curran of Threadless
This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller cruise their way into a murder mansion fever dream with Jake Nickell and Lance Curran, two of the minds behind Threadless—the Chicago-based t-shirt empire that helped invent crowdsourced artwear before we'd marketed terms like "creator economy" or "drop ship." What begins as a nostalgia trip (setting the stage for how the business
Episode 902: David Schilter and Pedro Vieira de Moura
Recorded live at the Comics Without Borders / Sans Frontières gathering at Rice University, this episode dives deep into international comics publishing, aesthetic risk-taking, and how underground networks drive a truly global comics culture. David Schilter, publisher and editor of Latvia's acclaimed kuš! comics, joins us alongside Pedro Vieira de Moura, Portuguese critic, writer, and co-founder o
Episode 901: Florencia Rodriguez and CAB 6
In this episode, we sit down with architect, editor, and curator Florencia Rodriguez, Artistic Director of the Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB) 6. We dig into the ideas shaping this year's edition—titled "Shift: Architecture in Times of Radical Change"—and her approach to curating a biennial that centers transformation, public space, and critical imagination. Rodriguez reflects on her journey
Bad at Sports Episode 900: Robert Pruitt
Recorded live at Comics Sans Frontières, Houston For our milestone 900th episode, we headed to Houston and sat down with the brilliant Robert Pruitt, live at the Cats Conference: Comics Sans Frontières—a gathering of artists, thinkers, and cultural workers reshaping the future of comics, narrative, and speculative visual worlds. Live at a bar after the second conference day. So, this is neve
Bad at Sports Episode 899: Jessica Snow & Liga Spunde
Gremlins, Borders, and Recipes for Resistance This week we're joined by Jessica Snow and Liga Spunde, two artists navigating the world through comics, street theater, and occasionally letterpress and photoshop. Jessica Snow walks us through her wide-ranging practice—from illustration and letterpress to building massive puppets and organizing street performances to attempting to confronting t
Bad at Sports Episode 898: Wafaa Bilal and Bana Kattan
This week. Dana's back? She and Duncan sit down with artist Wafaa Bilal and curator Bana Kattan to discuss Bilal's powerful and deeply personal mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Known for his provocative, often participatory works that grapple with war, trauma, displacement, and surveillance, Bilal has long made the body both a site of resistance and a vessel
Bad at Sports Episode 897: Architecture, Documentaries, and Changing Minds with Kyle Bergman and Ashley Lukasik
In this episode, we talk Architectural Doucmentaries, Graphic Design, the cross over of the art and design audiences, and whether or not social practice could be a job: Kyle Bergman, is the mastermind behind the Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF), takes us through the wild ride of showcasing global architectural stories and films. He shares the festival's international charm and its
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