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Painter Jim Lutes (born 1955) recently held an eight year retrospective at the State of Illinois Art Gallery. The hideous and the humorous collide in his often unsettling pictures, and major themes of his work include pollution, social ills, and death. The grit and squalor of the city inform his production, both in terms of subject matter; the littered streets and low-life types of the neighborhood where Lutes lives and the recycled distressed frames of his work are documents of urban history; and of Chicago’s traditional artistic fascination with the found object. He earned a BA from the Washington State University and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he is currently a Visiting Artist.