Curb Appeal, a new apartment gallery, brings access to the fore

Molly Joyce’s inaugural exhibition uses sound and video to share a spectrum of disability experiences.

By HANNAH EDGAR

Sandy Guttman can hazard a few guesses as to why Chicago’s disability arts and culture scene is the envy of other major cities. We’re home to the consortium Bodies of Work, which funds artists and programming exploring the disability experience; the Cultural Access Collaborative, an artist-run group advocating for more accessible art spaces; Unfolding Disability Futures, a grassroots curational group; Access Living, a disability rights nonprofit which also hosts artistic programming; and the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Disability Cultural Center and Disability Studies Department, the first in the country to o er a PhD in the subject. And that’s just naming the major players.

But Guttman—a self-described “able-bodied ally” and graduate of UIC’s program, who manages performance programming at the Museum of Contemporary Art—recognized that Chicago needed more reliably accessible galleries to host events by the aforementioned organizations, many of which don’t have their own spaces. Earlier this month, Guttman and her husband, Todd Garon, added one with Curb Appeal, a gallery run out of their storefront apartment at 24th and Oakley.

The location has some notable infrastructural accommodations already built in. All public spaces inside Curb Appeal are accessible by wheelchair, with a small threshold ramp near the entrance, a wide-set hallway and door to the bathroom, and grab bars once inside. Visitors arriving by car will pass approximately half a block of dedicated handicap-accessible street parking on 24th Street. The storefront is also close to the Western and Damen buses and the Western Pink Line.

Other accommodations are more adaptive. The exterior storefront has two steps to enter; Guttman and Garon keep a ramp on hand to let in visitors who may need help navigating them. They’ll also tweak Curb Appeal’s accommodations depending on the access needs of a given exhibition or visitor. For example, the space formally opened to the public on March 3 with composer Molly Joyce’s Perspective, an audiovisual installation layering conversation excerpts with disabled interviewees over

Joyce’s own undulating organs and synths. The wall label and handouts include an artist statement, sound descriptions, and QR code linking to audio clips of the text as well as a screen reader–friendly webpage.

“‘Creative accommodations’ is an umbrella term that’s being used more in disability art spaces. It describes the ways you build accessibility in aesthetic ways,” Guttman says. “In our space, that means, at the very base, we’re going to write a wall label, and it’s going to be accessible [in terms of] language and to folks who aren’t in the building, or who can’t read it using their eyes.”

Perspective is also informed by the ethos of creative accommodations. Joyce’s left-hand function became limited after a car accident in childhood, inspiring her to turn away from musical performance and pursue composition. Several years ago, she bought a vintage toy organ online on a whim, only to find it nicely suited her body: Her left hand manipulates chord buttons while her right plays the keys.

“I used to be self-conscious about how out of tune it is with itself. But the more I played

“Sandy’s suggestion to just show the captions was kind of groundbreaking to me. We’re conditioned by society to view captions and a lot of these accessibility accommodations as an add-on instead of artistically integral to a work,” Joyce says.

Among the interviewees in Perspective is Chicago media artist, sound designer, and musician Andy Slater, who also guided Joyce through creating sound descriptions for the installation. Since Perspective , Slater, who is visually impaired, and Joyce have toured together and collaborated on a variety of projects, including a 2021 artist workshop hosted by contemporary classical ensemble Eighth Blackbird and a recent orchestral commission by the National Youth Orchestra.

R“MOLLY JOYCE: PERSPECTIVE”

Through 4/22 : Sat 2-6 PM and by appointment, Curb Appeal, for exact address email info@curbappeal.gallery, curbappeal.gallery

“When I checked out Molly’s music, I was like, ‘Oh shit, this is like Steve Reich or Philip Glass, but also goth,’” Slater says.

Like Joyce, Slater has centered access and disability justice in his work over the past several years—not as ancillary accommodations, but by embedding them into the artworks themselves. His 2022 piece, Invisible Ink , describes three paintings through alt text, screen reader text, and audio clips. However, sighted audiences will only see a white box where the painting would be, requiring them to engage with one of the above mediums to experience the work.