A pair of denim jeans enhanced by acrylic paint, aerosol spray paint, permanent marker, and elbow grease. A lamp made out of tile, acrylic, and glass. A linen chore coat with flocked vinyl designs. Departing from the confines of traditional gallery settings, Anna Cerniglia and Kate Pollasch have united their decades-long curatorial and art programming experience to create Print & Object (P&O), a digital platform and online project space dedicated to showcasing contemporary artists’ editions, bespoke objects, and unique artworks. It’s a testament to the fluidity and creativity of Chicago’s art scene that supports local artists and aims to inspire the next generation of collectors.
Emphasizing accessibility across pricing, mediums, and styles, P&O includes clothing, functional objects, sculptural work, and other imaginative undertakings that the duo brings to life through art exhibitions, pop-up events, and collaborations across the city.
In a conversation over email, Cerniglia and Pollasch talk about the inception of the idea, their creative process, and the importance of finding balance between accessibility and exclusivity as they work toward fostering a more inclusive art community in Chicago. This interview has been condensed for length and clarity.
Courtesy Print & Object
Vasia Rigou: Can you talk about the journey and inspiration behind P&O?
Anna Cerniglia and Kate Pollasch: We both come from about 15 years of curatorial and commercial gallery experience and, during that time, collaborated on various exhibition, programming, and writing projects. Around 2019, we started talking about how we both get so inspired by the creative projects and endeavors that artists do outside of the traditional body of work made for a big exhibition or public artwork. Those creative moments often don’t make it into gallery shows or public view until decades later when you go to a museum retrospective and the curator has found these treasured explorations that appear in between and within the decades of major movements and series. When those moments are brought into an artist’s historical narrative it clarifies and enhances an understanding of how their work shifted and evolved over time—of how the playful, one-off experiments in different mediums or new subject matter weave into the more well-known work. We wanted to lean into that portion of an artist’s studio experience and create a platform where those works could be highlighted, celebrated, and opened up to collectors in the present time.
P&O grew from there, and during the incubation phase of our planning, we also refined some of our core program intentions: creating a collaborative partnership with artists where we shared in edition ideation and brainstorming, offering resources and support with fabrication or studio-based problem-solving, and sparking accessibility for collecting art. Accessibility can mean a lot of things for P&O: accessibility in pricing, accessibility in the online platforms that we use, and accessibility with a diverse range of artists/mediums/styles.
How do you select artists and artworks?
It is a really fun, collaborative partnership. We often have an ongoing conversation in text or Instagram DMs where we each are sharing artists that we are discovering, inspired by, and learning about. We also each have our own history of artists that we have worked with in the past, or artists that we hope to work with in the future. From all those inspiration points, we come together and have these incredibly invigorating “show and tell” meetings, where we talk to each other about the artists that we have seen recently and want to reach out to learn more about. After our “show and tell” we move forward with studio visits, learning what an artist is working on in the year or so to come and shaping our program schedule about a year in advance.
This project supports and uplifts local artists. Can you give me a few examples of specific artists/works that represent the Chicago art scene?
The Chicago art scene is always shifting and evolving. The range of mediums across P&O is a telling example of how wide-ranging Chicago’s scene is, from the acrylic piped work of Yvette Mayorga and magnet paintings by Roland Santana to Claire Ashley’s mini inflatables. Our newest program, Wears and Articles, pushes that even further by celebrating artists exploring mediums that might not often be available to collectors. This program features artistic interventions with clothing, objects, and unique sculptural work. You can see the multidimensionality of Chicago’s art scene represented here when you have an artist like Allie Kushnir, known for sculpture and painting, working in embroidery, and an artist like Dont Fret, known for graffiti, painting on pants.
If P&O represents anything about Chicago’s art scene, it is that it is fluid, creatively bold, welcoming, and unbound by rules and labels.
Courtesy Print & Object
How does P&O make art more accessible, and how do you balance this with maintaining the exclusivity of limited editions and bespoke objects?
We work to offer a range of prices so that the barrier to entry for collecting isn’t so high; we have original art that starts at $50. We also have works in the $1,000 to $5,000 range, so P&O really creates a multilevel space for collectors. The more people that feel like collectors and become part of this vast and expansive art community the better.
The bespoke and out-of-the-box limited edition nature of our program ties back to the origin of how P&O became an idea. Look at an artist like Roger Brown, a cornerstone of the Chicago Imagists whose primary medium and historical identity is in painting on canvas. But he also painted on found objects like irons and footstools, and those objects are fascinating to consider when you look at his complete history, but very sparse compared to the quantity of his paintings on canvas. P&O is a space for that kind of artistic sidestep from an artist’s well-known practice and it is with that divergence that accessibility and bespoke harmonize.
How do you envision the evolution of P&O, and are there any new initiatives or directions you are excited to explore?
We just launched our newest program, Wears and Articles, celebrating the longstanding history of artists being inspired by and inspiring fashion, design, and functional objects. We kicked off our launch with artists Leslie Baum, Dont Fret, Marina Kozak, Allie Kushnir, Giulia Piera Livi, and Stacia Yeapanis.
We are also excited to continue evolving our partnerships with other businesses and creative firms, placing P&O artworks in new spaces for broader audiences to see. In Spring ’23 we had a pop-up shop weekend collaboration with the Center of Order and Experimentation that has evolved into an ongoing relationship. Currently, the Center has Claire Ashley inflatables available to view and purchase. We also partnered with the Hoxton on two different endeavors, first with a selection of photographs from Brendan Carroll’s series “The Final Race At Arlington,” which were on view in their rotating gallery space, and now a selection of Angela Finney’s sculptures are on display in their shop.
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