What a Shithole!

The Shit Hole Shit Home.

Everyone has a favorite shit hole. This is the story and interview with the man who created mine. At least it was an interview until the recording miraculously evaporated deep into my iPhone’s OS. It’s moments like this that I wish I could access the government’s recorded logs made legal by The Patriot Act. Unfortunately, like this interview, The Patriot Act has long since expired. Too bad. If it was possible for an article to be a shit hole, this one would take the urinal cake.

Shit Hole was founded in 2013 by Zach Bartz & Kevin Gerrity in Chicago, Illinois as a hideaway for art. Inspired by his strong passion for live performance, theatre in particular, Bartz felt called to start something.

Seven years and 552 shows later, Shit Hole had a cult following of audience members who longed for a deeper & more authentic connection with performative art. To what can we credit the deep love that I, and many others had for this series? Was it that the show changed venues most weeks? Was it the pulp and horror inspired posters designed by Loren Egeland? Was it the mass amount of art that covered the main venue’s walls? Was it Dan Wilcop’s technical direction that brought the show to another level? Was it simply because the show was called “Shit Hole” and people just liked saying the name? Who is to say?

Posters created by Loren Egeland

What could compel the modern person to attend a show where the host gets on stage and says,

"Please don't talk or use your phone. If you do, we'll give you a warning. If you do it again we will ask you to leave." ~ Zach Bartz of Shit Hole.

Who in their right mind would attend a show that has such strict rules, man? To add insult to injury, in order to even attend a Shit Hole Show, one had to DM @shitholehq on Instagram for the show’s location, only to be sent two street names that intersect each other. WTF? No addy?? Any sane person would leave the message unread and stay in and watch some Netflix instead. That’s the easy thing to do.

Shit Hole wasn’t easy. As an audience member you were held accountable. You were asked to be present and respectful of the performers. That’s a mighty tall order without the use of Yondr bags. Why jump through so many shit hoops for this? What did they offer after all this? They gave us, the audience members, the opportunity to rise to the occasion — and we did for 7 years.

In 2020, the weekly show was abruptly cut short by the COVID-19 Pandemic. While this was a massive loss for the community, it was a massive opportunity for Zach Bartz to discover a deeper artistry within himself. This is where the next chapter starts.

Zach Bartz with his work, which you can find on his Etsy account (ZachBartzStudiosLLC).

Zach Bartz: I never gave myself the permission to create visual art, but Shit Hole was definitely the reason I was able to start painting. Given the supportive nature of the show, and the fact that we were asking everyone else to draw on the walls, I thought, “I should just draw something and if I don’t like it, I can just sign somebody else’s name.” And then once I was creating without the self-imposed stakes or judgment – without editing it before it was even done, I was like, “Wow, I really enjoy this. Both the process and the product” And then I started learning a little bit about art history, walking around the Art Institute and asking questions, and I was really inspired by the Impressionists, the Post-impressionists, and the modernists, these people who were creating work that not only was ignored, but was actively disliked. And this work ended up becoming some of the most important, most valuable artwork a century later. It just goes to show you that you just have to give yourself permission to put work out there, and do it again and again and again.

Nick Corey: Yeah.

ZB: And for me, when it came down to choosing if I’d rather spend the majority of my creative time making visual art or running and performing in a comedy show, I found that it was easier for me to bring comedy into art than to bring art into comedy. I don’t really want to do an improv-based show on the lives of Matisse or Winslow Homer, but I do like to make a painting through a comedic lens. And for me, I can use so many tenets of improvisation in my process to create art. I can discover, instead of invent. And since I mainly create using upcycled thrift store materials, I can look at the source material, make choices, I can heighten and use repetition to excavate something new. It just felt like a lot of my theater training was transferable to creating visual art. And so once the show ended, I just went all in on that. And it’s been super fulfilling and feels very organic. It felt like I took the blinders off and really followed the heat of this new passion.

NC: Yeah.

ZB: And when comparing producing a live show every week and producing paintings, I found that it’s a lot easier for me to wrangle 100 paint brushes instead of 100 performers and audience members, you know? And it feels good to be focusing on myself and my work. I don’t have to be responsible for what somebody else does on stage or off stage. I can just be responsible for my painting.

(a very thoughtful pause)

I love working on a team, but there’s a lot of opportunities in any sort of team structure for things to fall by the wayside or be misunderstood or miscommunicated. And it makes more sense for me to start this new chapter and be like, “I spent seven years uplifting a lot of other people, and I helped create a lot of opportunities for people while also sacrificing a lot of my own time and energy. And now I think I want to focus and do something for myself.”

NC: Hell yeah. I…I was just going to say, I think it’s incredible how…I always love when you can transfer one set of artistic principles into another artistic medium.

ZB: Hell yeah, thank you.

NC: It’s also like…like skills that you’ve developed through different projects that require different types of focus from you… I don’t know…we become very versatile people. And I think when you really kind of extend yourself in those ways, it is very beneficial.

ZB: Hell yeah. Everything informs each other, right? Whether it’s just the basis of your life experience or it’s transferable skills from another medium. I truly believe it’s all forward motion if you don’t give up. And as long as you continue in some capacity, you’ll discover something. Whether it’s your time within the actual creation of something or just a mishap you had in an elevator, it’s all something that you can mine and say, “Wow, that’s something I’ll do again” or “Ah man, I’ll for sure never do that again!” It’s all just about finding the product of your circumstance, and putting something you think is cool out there into the world.

NC: This has been really cool.

ZB: It was great catching up with you. I appreciate you keeping me in mind.

NC: Absolutely.

ZB: Keep killing it.

NC: Thank you. Peace.