British contemporary artist Paul Martin (1948–2022) described art as  “a lonely occupation… a conversation within your own head and with the work in progress, and all else a distraction.”   In the years since the pandemic, many remote workers have found themselves in a similar state—spending long days in their own rooms, their own heads, their own screens, with colleagues reduced to pings and shifting images on a laptop.   Against the backdrop of Chicago’s iconic tavern cultu