The Art of Steve W
Survey of recent work from an important Chicago artist
Steve Walters is essential to our understanding of Arte Agora. I pulled my first Steve W poster off the wall in 1994 in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago. Here’s an excerpt from Arte Agora: Revised Second Edition:
Around 2022, he began to publicly move away from the medium and explore new forms of art. You can read all about that here in Robert Chiarito’s excellent piece in Chicago Magazine: Steve Walters Has Left His Print.
Recently he reminded me that I took part in a subscription offer that he made around the time that he began making his shift. He typically numbers his work made in editions, and he had set aside #11 for us. So we went to Sunday Art and Rummage to pick them up.
What follows is a quick take on the recent silkscreen art of a legendary silkscreen artist during the time he was moving away from it— documentation of a vibrant artist in flux.
Here’s a precisely-hewn small character suite printed in different colorways. These read like neo-folk, pulp-toy silhouettes filtered through his poster grammar (bold flats, halftone textures).
