MISSION STATEMENT

The Green Lantern Gallery & Press is a 501(c)3 non-profit gallery and paperback press dedicated to the study, presentation, and archive of contemporary art practice. Because we believe that independent cultural production and idiosyncratic effort is the fount for meaning and friendship, The Green Lantern, hosts monthly art exhibitions for emerging artists and publishes limited-edition books by new or forgotten writers who are making significant contributions to today's cultural landscape. With a focus on the visual arts, The Green Lantern establishes paths of accessibility between the work and its audience by contextualizing its events through writing, a literary reading series The Parlor, video, performance and music. The ultimate success of Green Lantern is determined by the willingness of its community.

STAFF

Caroline Picard, Director

If one were to accurately use his or her imagination, (s)he would see Caroline standing roughly at 67 inches with straight blonde hair that flows just past the corners of her jaw. In the afternoons, she is jogging through Wicker Park, sometimes with a Walkman wired to her ears, while at others, simply running with two birds pressed to them. This is what she likes to call having Birds in Stereo. Through the evenings, she is hard at work either painting or in the midst of practicing the art of bookbinding. In the past, she has sung and played tambourine for the insanely prolific rock-outfit, Thee Iran Contras.

 

Nick A. Sarno III, Editor

The scene is this. It is Sunday and we are in New York City, specifically the West Village, say somewhere around 10th and Greenwich Street. Out of a five-story brownstone steps a man, wearing glasses and a small, black woolen cap which hides his hair which has its way of being curly. We zoom, then pan upwards, finally resting at a window on the fourth floor framed by a firescape. Inside, a small black cat amuses herself on top of a manuscript entitled, God Bless the Squirrel Cage.

 

Jason Bacasa, Designer

Jason currently lives in New York, juggling various things. Currently, his bedroom is an exact replica of a bedroom in Quebec around the year of 1982. While he was only three at the time, there's something about how the room is perpetually backlit which gives him and many others this impression. With this in mind, it is easy to imagine a saxophone playing outside his window over top of seasonal showers. He performs under the moniker Tan or Boil and is currently holed up recording a proper full-length. In conjunction with Green Lantern, he plans to 䴊 at last 䴊 publish his quasi-essay, Text Messaging and Desire: A Meditation on a Newly-Imagined Eros.

 

Lily Robert-Foley, Assistant Editor

Lily Robert-Foley is everything that is not Lily Robert-Foley is not. To name a few things: a duck hunter, a politician, age 7, the elderly, flat, dead, Spanish, reptilian, ineluctable, savvy, macho, destined, a fish, right-to-life, passÌ°å©, a continent (or incontinent), a label maker, a jelly jar, the same as my mother, a futurist, a doomsday sayer, on TV, head of state, a head of lettuce, ahead of the game or headed in the right or wrong direction. She lives in Humboldt Park Chicago where she currently takes the train for a living and is married to Rod Serling. She can also occasionally be seen writing, making machines and working for The Green Lantern.

 

Tobias Amadon Bengelsdorf, Assistant Editor

Toby wants you to know that the mess makes sense. The pile of clothes, on the pile of books, on the pile of papers䴊piles on piles on piles. Toby wants you to know they are more than piles䴊they are monuments. Monuments to an idea, an insight, a next-big-thing that couldn't wait one second more. There was no time to hang it up, shelve it, or file it away. No time could be spared for such mundanity. There was something new to write, something new to look up, an old chair to fix. He also wants you to know that his fiction has appeared in elimae, and This Zine Will Change Your Life, and his audio work in Lark(!). In addition to his duties at The Green Lantern, he is the generalissimo of Fiction at Work, and an instructor at St. Augustine College.

 

Young Joon, Exhibition Coordinator

Young Joon Kwak lives in Pilsen, catches vagabond hoodlums under his bed late at night and calls grandmothers instead of cops. He is a painter with family in New York and a life in Chicago. Between places or not, he's made a good life here buying bread in the daytime from the Latino bakery and tamales at night from the occasional bar. A man at home in the world. He has sometimes been called a naughty frog. Which is part of where his brilliance comes from.

 

Kerry Schneider, Grants Coordinator

 

Kenny Rasmussen, Musical Curator

Kenny Rasmussen is the current contact for music events at the Green Lantern. He can be reached at krasmussen79(at)gmail(dot)com.

 

Shira Leon, Archival Assistant

It is fall and near perfect. Some might think it is the entirely wrong season for such an activity, but Shira reads in a hammock on her back porch. As her neighbor, I can tell you, she does this in any season. Shira knows a good book and the appropriate tea to drink with it. Shira acts accordingly, to weather, to matter.

 

Naomi Henderson, Publications Assistant

After touring the former Soviet Block with her compatriots Shirt Woman and Beth Bartholomieux, Naomi has returned to the States with no marketable skills and a penchant for art. Besides interning at the Green Lantern, she spends her time reading Audubon field guides to mushrooms and trees and pining for the forests of her home. On weekends she can be found frying chicken and drinking beer.

 

Halle Butler, Membership Assistant

Halle Butler, an only child, grew up in a small Mid-Western town where most of the streets were named after her forebears. In elementary school, the children took field-trips to her great-great-great-great grandfather䴜s mansion, as he was an honorable and important man. Still making adjustments, Butler lives with her rabbit, Charles, on the north side of Chicago.