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The co-founder of Polvo chats contemporary art.

Sunday Apr 23, 2006.     By Joanne Hinkel

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It feels awkward at first. To be looking at Deb Sokolow's "Understanding Scarface" installation as Miguel Cortez checks his mail and rinses a couple of dishes. But it all makes sense soon enough. I'm at Polvo, one of Chicago's most quietly important art spaces. And art and life are one and the same here.

Cortez's living space is a kitchenette, a futon, a TV and a chair piled with clothes. Together it takes up all of 150 square feet. The rest of the studio, painted gallery-white, is committed to art. Forget track lighting. Office lights are jury-rigged around ceiling fans, taped and re-positioned according to the show.

What may sound like a spontaneous enterprise is actually one of the most long-lasting alternative art spaces in the city. In 1996 Cortez, Jesus Macarena and Elvia Rodriguez, then art students and emerging artists, formed Polvo first as a magazine and then as a gallery. Since then the outfit has moved four times in Pilsen, curated important shows protesting the war, championing environmentalism and sponsored events and exhibits that keep a pulse on the Latin American experience.

After I've had a chance to look at all of Sokolow's work and Cortez has settled in, we sit down in the Polvo conference room, a.k.a. his futon, to chat:

Do you think of yourself as a dealer?
No, not at all. The artist gets all the freedom he wants to, to use however much space there is, however many pieces. I don't tell them what to do. And, much of the work is installation, which can't really be sold.

Why did you, Elvia Rodriguez and Jesus Macarena start Polvo?
Well, we all met at a graphic design workshop, we were all students either in the Art Institute or Columbia College. In the '90s around Pilsen there wasn't much that was contemporary. It was a lot of typical Mexican art and we didn't feel we fit into that. We decided to do something more, so we started the magazine and soon started putting shows together.

What does "Polvo" mean?
It means dust, the act of sex, semen or cocaine depending where you are in Latin America. At the time we had no idea that it had all these meanings. The original intent was just an "explosion of creativity."

[Knock, knock, knock! Cortez's 10 year-old son has arrived from school and is pounding at the door to say hello.]

What does your son think of the art?
He loves it. When he was little he would try to go up to it and touch it. Over the years he's learned to respect it and observe it from a distance.

What is Polvo's criteria for choosing art?
I look for new media and installation projects. These are my interests and Elvia and Jesus' interests. As long as the art challenges us in a social way or it presents an interesting new idea than we want to look at it. With Deb's exhibit...she was here at a show last spring and we talked about it and decided she would do a show here. A year later, here's "Understanding Scarface."

What is it like to live in the gallery so to speak?
I love it. I love coming home from a menial computer job to here. I can spend hours staring at whatever is up. Every month it is different.

Where is your closet?
Over there (points to a chair and some boxes).

You probably can't cook anything too elaborate [pointing to the kitchen counter covered with stuff]?
Naah, not really. I go out to restaurants and places around here. [Insider's tip: Nuevo Leon is around the block.]

On the website you list names of artists who "support what we do." What do you mean by that?
I think since we don't rely on anything commercial that's one thing. [In a traditional gallery situation] artists feel pressure to produce things that will sell. What they like about this space is that they get the freedom to do whatever they want. It's a challenge, but they love it.

How many hours a week do you devote to Polvo?
A lot...I maintain the website, design the postcards; I make time for the artists to come to check out the space, I am here on Saturdays from noon to five. We, myself, Elvia and Jesus, curate projects outside of Polvo as well. This month we are all in a show, "E Romantico," curated by Jesus at Columbia College's Glass Curtain Gallery.

How do you stay so committed to Polvo when you don’t make money from it?
This is what I love to do...and Chicago needs spaces like this.

[This week at Polvo: Entorno: Grass Grows Greener on the Other Side at Polvo this week; opening reception on Friday, April 28, 6-10 p.m. For more info, visit: http://www.polvo.org. Also this month, the art of all three Polvo founders is featured at Lo Romántico, an exhibit devoted to Chicago Latino/a artists (through May 5).]