About those paintings
http://oakpark.suntimes.com/2014/09/01/hollywood-paintings-buzz-cafe/
If you look carefully at the walls of the Buzz Café, there’s a little bit of Hollywood.
How it got to the Oak Park Arts District cafe is a bit of mystery, or was, until recently.
Specifically, two photo-realistic paintings — titled “Blue Cup” and “Skanks,” respectively — have hung on the café’s walls for almost a decade. They’re also featured prominently in director Terry Zwigoff’s 2006 movie “Art School Confidential.”
The artist info boxes next to the paintings — small scraps of paper smudged behind aging Scotch tape — identify the painter as James Emmenegger, complete with a phone number that isn’t his. Dead end No. 1.
“He said he’d come back and then never did,” said Buzz Café co-owner Laura Maychruk.
A few social media accounts featured a few more images in his style, but the pages appeared abandoned. Dead end No. 2.
Just as enigmatic was the work itself: Brightly-colored paintings of what looked to be Polaroids washed out by a too-strong flash. The subjects appear to be unaware of a camera, joyful and perhaps a little tipsy.
More Internet sleuthing identified a man named James Emmenegger as a drummer for The Blacks, a band that recorded with Chicago label Bloodshot Records. A rep from Bloodshot thought that yes, Emmenegger also painted and there was a rumor that he’d moved to Los Angeles — but the contact information they had for him was no good. Dead end No. 3.
Perhaps a dozen of Emmeneggers’ canvases can be seen in “Art School Confidential,” the adaptation of a comic book by Daniel Clowes (“Ghost World”). The art house indie movie was a mix of murder and artistic angst starring Max Minghella, John Malkovich and Steve Buscemi.
In the film, the paintings are hung in the café owned by Buscemi’s Broadway Bob, a launching pad for aspiring artists. Much the same could be said for the Buzz Café’s walls, which have displayed and sold artists’ work since it opened in 1998 — including much of Emmenegger’s early work.