A night at the Burkhart Underground

About a week ago, I received an e-mail from the Burning Man Chicago list inviting me to a night of "art, music and mayhem" in Wicker Park at the Burkhart Underground, home and studio of "freak chic" photographer Fred Burkhart. Despite the bitter cold outside, I ventured out. Here's my write-up, broken up by a few photos I snapped of Burkhart's studio early in the night before things picked up (unfortunately my trusty Canon Powershot was running low on battery juice that night...). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After a two-year hiatus that saw him relocate from Lakeview, recover from a broken back and find fresh financial backing from a friend and fan with deep pockets, photographer, painter and poet Fred Burkhart is back.

Fred Burkhart, "freak chic" photographer and impresario grabs a bite to eat while entertaining guests at the Burkhart Underground.

And Chicago's Bohemia is back in his basement. Burkhart is again hosting Sunday evening all-ages coffeehouse gatherings in the basement of his new Wicker Park studio. Preppies, goths, geeks, hippies, hipsters—all are welcome at the Burkhart Underground—so long as you leave the drugs, tobacco and alcohol outside and bring a $5 donation.

“There’s nothing else like it in Chicago,” says Kam Grant, at a recent gathering that attracted about 30 people on a bitterly cold night. It was the third event in the new location since Burkhart started them up again in late December. Grant, a carpenter and custom motorcycle builder attended his first Burkhart Underground years ago in college and estimates he’s been to “50, maybe 100” since. “It’s in somebody’s house, which gives it a laid back feeling,” he says. “I don’t like going to bars, so this is a great alternative.”

Burkhart's second floor studio space, currently set up for painting. Just a week earlier the room played host to a raucous burlesque performance. "I'm trying to elevate this to something more than a party," Burkhart says.

Burkhart puts the coffee on at 7 p.m. but the evenings don’t get rolling until 9, when the musicians show up. The current format, a handful of performances from folk-influenced singer-songwriters and poetry readings, is loose. Burkhart insists it used to be a lot looser, with an open mic that attracted some “truly awful stuff” at times. Though performances from Rebecca F. and Colin McGeehan, Ami Saraiya (aka Radiant Darling) and Anna Soltys draw enthusiastic applause, the night belongs, perhaps unsurprisingly, to Burkhart himself, whose spoken-word poetry draws the biggest crowd.

"No time. It's tinged in silver. As tattered lips and tongues wind their way through ancient songs, made out of the void of heaven, they call," he chants over accompaniment from an upright bass and electric guitar. Burkhart's new studio space has a foot in two worlds. With its hardwood floors, track lighting, white folding chairs and couches it resembles the living room you wish you had. Meanwhile its walls, lined with framed photographs of his subjects--Klu Klux Klansmen, burlesque dancers, “hardcore lesbians,” “hardcore druggies” and nude men and women-- sneak up on you and assault the senses like a slap in the face. Burkhart's spent his life capturing extreme situations on film. In the new space, he's built a shrine to this work.

First Floor Burkhart Underground The first floor of the Burkhart Underground showcases a wall of pencil sketches the artist made during seven recent months when he had no access to a darkroom, "a difficult time," he says.

For the last two years, the old carriage house, tucked away off Noble Street, served as Burkhart's “hermitage.” It was only after Burkhart approached its owner, real estate agent Joe Schiller and pitched him the idea of starting up the coffeehouses again, that it took on its current shape. Schiller, a longtime fan of the strong sexuality in Burkhart’s work, says he “cashed in his retirement” and spent $50,000 renovating the building’s electrical system, basement, stairwell and heating system.

“I bet the house on Fred,” he says. “Why not have something so beautiful around me at all times? It was sort of selfish.” Schiller sees the Sunday coffeehouse as the first step in launching a new artist community in Wicker Park and hopes to expand it in the future. “There’s a space I know that I’d love to convert into an art colony and I could fill it in a minute, and I’d let Fred run it,” he says. Burkhart’s own goals for the coffeehouse are only slightly less ambitious. “Every person here has a slightly different idea of what this is about,” says the 64-year-old, when asked about Schiller’s plans. “I’m creating a landscape, a place where people can gather and talk about art.” And talk they did, over chips, soda pop and home brewed coffee late into the night. The Burkhart Underground coffeehouse happens on Sunday nights from 7pm to midnight at 1228 N. Noble Street in Wicker Park. Read up on Fred Burkhart: