Mark Klapper

Mark Klapper (b. 1967) makes drawings and paintings that revel in the wonders of nature and the cosmos. He mixes together various paints and pastels and applies stencil and collaging techniques, allowing space for surprises. “It’s almost like a chemistry set,” he says, “always creating something new.” Klapper starts with concrete references - shooting stars, mountainscapes, lightning storms - but he interprets them in a bold, geometric, and highly personal way that veers close to total abstraction. Color, layered in scribbles and blended into vivid auras, is especially significant for the artist. “Blue is my favorite color. When I go out and look at the sky, I wonder what kind of day it will be from the light in the sunlight. My favorite is twilight, just before the sun sets - a nice, peaceful time.”

He also considers light and darkness in the poems he writes. They’re written entirely in capital letters, with short phrases frequently repeated like an incantation. “When you repeat the words, it gives it more meaning. It brings it closer to you.” 

Klapper says he writes about darkness because it’s misunderstood. He describes getting lost one night as a child; he was afraid of the dark, clinging to a flashlight when he drifted to sleep. When he woke up, it had burnt out. He was in a deep darkness, but decided that he was no longer afraid. “Dark is just the essence of the light that’s not there. There’s nothing wrong with it,” he says. His poems are written in a little spiral-bound notebook, though sometimes the words spill out beyond that, inked in jagged phrases across his sweatshirts and pants.

Klapper grew up in the Chicago neighborhood of Pilsen with four brothers, the son of a UPS employee and a housekeeper. He started making art at 25 years old, encouraged by a free class offered at the Community Integrated Living Arrangement where he resided. He now lives in a group home in Portage Park and is excited by the endless possibilities of his pictures: “Some days you can have triangles, some days circles, some days wavy lines - it’s always changing.”