Chop Chop Gallery

Chop Chop is a jack of all trades kinda artist endeavor with brilliant and potentially insane (insanely brilliant?) people running it. A quick tour of the studio –screen printing labs, sewing rooms, garage, props everywhere, a skate ramp– is enough to show the schizophrenic creativity bursting out of this place. They seem to do graphic design and creative branding every which way from Sunday. From what I saw they do a brilliant job of it too.
Swing by the space if they’re open to the public sometime, its an art piece in and of itself.

Chop Chop set up shop at the wonderful MusicNOW festival in Cincinnati in March 2009. They did on site screen printing on demand. It reminded me of great outdoor festivals that mix music and arts and crafts, such as the Pitchfork Music Festival in my hometown of Chicago. My friend chose a shirt and had it screen printed in front of her very eyes. I chose to order from them later, directly from their website.
I chose the cool inverted Smokestack Ohio design (see their Etsy shop pics). After completing my order through their Etsy site, I was immediately notified that the ringer tee I chose was not available. Ashley gave me great customer service via email, including lots of alternatives. Turn around time was fast, and my shirt with shipping actually turned out to be cheaper than if I bought it on site in Ohio. The tee is Anvil brand, a nice alternative to American Apparel, and it’s comfy and stylish. I’ve got the perfect souvenir from my trip to Cincinnati, an Ohio tee shirt by Chop Chop!

I attended the Superstar panel discussion which was organized by Matt Mascaro and included some of the most famous of the surviving Warhol movie actors. The area first room of the gallery inside the entrance was surprisingly cold on this night early in Winter, but many of the personalities present were warm and interesting. A table was respledent with some delicious little appetizers and bottles of wine from which my girlfriend and i had to forcibly remove ourselves.
The discussion was raucous, full of laughs and stinging repartee. The room in which it happened was well suited to the proceedings, being open, comfortably lighted, and outfitted with comfortable chairs for the featured guests and the attendees. There was a projector throwing a collage of Warhol-​related clips onto the white wall, and it felt like a special and unique event overall. If the Chop-​Chop can continue procuring programs of this level of execution and appeal, it ought to continue establishing a lively name for itself within the cache of Columbus art galleries.