Making Room for Artists at Chicago's LivingRoom

January 25, 2011
Topics: Art and Style, Community Spaces, Homes and Buildings
Author: 
Scott Ballum

It’s difficult to know where to begin when describing the Chicago-based real estate business of Abraham McClurg and Annie Coleman. Even their website betrays a bit of their split personality. What’s consistent about their work, though, is its remarkable transparency around their greater goal of making space for local artists and musicians to live, work, perform, exhibit, and enrich their community. Evidence of this service motivation is found in their proactive approach to working with coops and co-housing, as well as the transformation of their own office into an exhibition gallery.

Abraham and Annie talked about starting what would become LivingRoom Realty long before either had a realtors license. The business was truly born of their own experiences as working artists, and their shared desire to build a stronger support system for their friends and fellow creative Chicagoans. To this end, they are advocates for legally-challenging groups of unrelated individuals who are looking to buy loft space together, and have become experts in the laws regarding co-ownerships and cooperatives. They find spaces in the city that they themselves would want to live and work in, and then connect the right group to the right space.

They also serve this same community with the LivingRoom Gallery, their own funky office space turned art gallery and event space. As gallerists, Abraham and Annie host music events, regular installations, book readings, and film screenings, participate in community fairs, and host workshops surrounding sustainable living and development and financing for artists. The LivingRoom team also raises funding for their own micro-grants, an annual program supporting as varied applicants as a local public school teacher who wanted to bring her students to the Art Institute of Chicago, to an elderly woman whose fixed income doesn’t cover the costs of sketchpads and china markers.

Like many of the entrepreneurs in the Sheepless community, Abraham and Annie came from quite diverse backgrounds—their site mentions Annie is a ‘multi-instrumentalist’, while Abraham ‘holds a BFA in Photography, an AAS in Culinary Arts, and a Private Pilot license’ among his eclectic resume. Real estate ended up being a means for them to do what they saw needed to be done. It hasn't been about finding a way for them to support themselves nearly as much as it has been a way for them to support the artist community of Chicago.

Image: Back Alley Disturbance by Philip Dembinski, from Nothing Just Happens/Along The Boulevards, exhibited at LivingRoom Gallery in 2008–09.

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