Get on the art bus

At a music-studio party on Huron Street last month, a purple and turquoise school bus rolled onto the scene, and managed to nab a parking spot that fit its 24-foot-long frame. The driver and owner, Fred Burkhart, swung open the doors and started to light several sticks of nag champa incense. After looking at various drawings of people like Fiona Apple and jazz musician Peter Brötzmann taped to the windows, one woman peeked her head in and said, “Whoa, is this your bus?” Then she spotted a couple of paintings and said, “It’s like a mobile gallery.”

More than “like”: A mobile gallery is precisely what Burkhart’s bus is. Through his 66 years, Burkhart has skipped around the world—hanging with and photographing Beat writers, musicians, KKK members (who almost beat him to death), and Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters on the bus that Tom Wolfe immortalized in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test . After settling into Chicago 21 years ago, the portrait photographer hosted art shows in his Lakeview storefront space; in 1998, he turned it into a coffeehouse called the Burkhart Underground. But in 2005, the building was sold, and Burkhart moved out.

“When I was over on Halsted, I had people stopping in all the time, ’cause I was right on the street, you know,” says the artist, who now lives in Noble Square. “But now I’m a little bit more secluded, so I started looking for a bus that I could use to just hop around to places, show my work.”

Burkhart—who once owned a yellow school bus to take his homeschooled daughter on trips, like to meet Kesey—bought his bus on eBay and suited it up in June. He recently popped up at the Chicago Underground Film Fest, but doesn’t always have luck finding a place to park his prize. He’ll try his luck at the Umbrella Music Festival Thursday 1 to Monday 5, the Hideout’s Wednesday jazz night and the Old Town School of Folk Music on Saturday 3.

On Burkhart’s bus, crates filled with matted black-and-white photographs are divided into categories like derelicts, bra-wearing boys, christians, chicks that kick and maxwell street. Tucked within the jazz section are prints of Lester Bowie and Roscoe Mitchell, founders of the avant-garde jazz group Art Ensemble of Chicago. “They were good friends of mine. The Art Ensemble tore the lids off things in the ’60s,” Burkhart says.

When asked if there’s a pattern to his work, Burkhart says, “I just record what’s around me. Whether I’m photographing an orgy or a Pentecostal minister, it’s all the same; it’s about someone else’s awareness, which expands my own.” He wants to expand other people’s awareness with his mobile gallery. “I can just drive over to someone’s house, like an ice-cream man,” he says. “Most people don’t go to gallery openings. I can make house calls.”

To catch the bus, see Music listings for events and venue details. Visit burkhartstudios.com.