Optimistic optometrists says that their glasses are half-full, that to envision 2020 one must first elect to leap, vote or olymp in 2016. So here we are: the first Trunk Show of 2016. We often begin by looking back, in this case we’d most likely begin by describing our December show. We might talk about how Alex Bradley Cohen’s vibrant drawing “IDEAS ARE FUNNY THINGS” has served better to warm heads, hearts and bumpers alike than most any facile fuel. We would mention how gracious TUSK was to host, how many friends came by to eat our snacks—all selected based on the notion that some foods are better as ideas, like gyros-flavored chips, cola-flavored seltzer, 3D-flavored Doritos—and listened to an eclectic selection from the oeuvre of favorite funny rapper Will Smith. ABC also brought an abecedarium of sorts and we played the party game “which rapper is most like which painter.” These are all things we might’ve said had we said them. Which we did, which reminds us that in an election year saying things and not saying things are more closely tied than ever.

Canada just held an election. Jesse’s grandmother can tell you just how much she loved Justin Trudeau and the time that she met his father, the first Prime Minister Trudeau. Jesse, for his part, just thinks of a nice thick Montreal accent responding that something turns out to be “true though” and how that accent isn’t that far from a Chicago south side one. For those who like they’re trunks equipped with spoilers: Jessica Campbell is both a Canadian and comedian. She’s a comics artist, painter, drawer, sculptor, writer and performer. The subjects—let’s say the butts—of her jokes are wide-ranging: teen-vulnerabilities; eyes-bulging awooo-ga desire; basketballs and brickwalls.

Even though it’s a nice time of year to consider interiority*, it’s also important to go out, to see your friends and art and get inspired and have a dang La Croix during those few hours when the sun is up. We’re delighted that our friends at Fernwey have opened up their space for this show on Sunday 1/31 from 1-3, which might seem like odd times but they’re also prime hours. As we’ve heard people saying “get your rears in gear” and “enough with your arrears—just buy a subscription already.”

Subscriptions are available here and now for a full year of artist bumper stickers sent right to your door. Upcoming Trunk Show artists include Alexandria Eregbu and Clay Hickson.

ABOUT JESSICA CAMPBELL
Jessica Campbell is an enthusiast of jokes, painting and comics from Canada, where she was raised on an island that, according to the pentecostal church of her youth, also happens to be the witchcraft capital of North America. She completed her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was the recipient of the Edward L. Ryerson Fellowship. She has exhibited work in Canada, the US, Australia and Greece, and was recently selected as one of Newcity’s 2015 Breakout Artists.

ABOUT TRUNK SHOW
TRUNK SHOW is a mobile exhibition space usually located in Chicago. It features monthly solo shows for which artists are commissioned to design a limited edition bumper sticker. The sticker lives, rides along with and helps propel a medium beat-up 1999 forest green Ford Taurus owned by Raven Falquez Munsell and Jesse Malmed. In addition to the month-long exhibitions, the bumper stickers are sold à la carte and by annual subscription. Openings follow a nomadic, symbiotic logic and include a public affixing, conceptual catering and playlists. TRUNK SHOW has been featured in the Chicago Reader, Hyperallergic, Newcity (who also named it The Best New Gallery on a Car Bumper) and the Chicago Tribune, which deemed these missives among the Best of Visual Art in Chicago.

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