Finch Gallery interview

So our first artist highlight on this blog is Nicholas Freeman, the “man
with the plan”. Nicholas is about to move to NYC, to the "Belly of the
Beast," as he referred to it. He said he is going out there to “suck up”. Whoa, man- now that’s some heavy shit.

Well, if you saw our live set on UStream you’d know that the move isn't
just about making lives better and spreading art to the masses. That’s
the beauty of the live set: finding out what’s between the lines of the
interview.

For those that didn’t catch the live set, here’s the rundown: I pushed
and prodded for Nicholas to tell me why he was going to New York. All my
digging couldn't dent his composure in the least. He was standing by his
story of New York as the “place to go” and that Chicago was the land of
the lazy genius. (A note on the “lazy genius: There’s a lot of
Protestant work ethic here in Chicago. The people in this town work
HARD at what they do, but Nicholas is right that there isn’t much push
for a guy to elevate himself beyond his post.)

Ok, let’s get back to the UStream set. After about 55 min into the hour
show, an anonymous listener ‘chimed in’ to say that Nicholas had a woman
in New York who was actually a big reason for his leaving. That’s all it
takes, isn’t it? It just kills it for me; all that junk about how
EVERYTHING goes through New York- That it’s better for him to open on
the street there than have an actual gallery here- It’s all rubbish.

Nicholas grew up on the NW side “where everything comes with fries,” and
I was ecstatic to learn that he was out there, making art and running a
gallery. It’s a shame that Finch will be leaving, although I think the
bigger loss will be Nicholas. And I wish him the best of luck in everything he does out in New York.