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Berwyn, IL —
Oak Park resident Corey Glaberson took Mark Twain's advice of making your vocation your vacation to a new level.
After more than 20 years of traveling dozens of American cities and several countries to sell classic movie posters and memorabilia, Glaberson will open a storefront to house Reel Art, which had previously been an online and mail order memorabilia retailer.
The new business, which is slated to open in May at 6727 Stanley Ave. in Berwyn, will concentrate on what Glaberson calls “paper ephemera,” such as old magazines, comic books and other artifacts of pop culture's past.
“Collectors love that idea of vintage, that idea of holding something in their hands that was there at the time back in the ‘30s,” said Glaberson. “It's important to have some symbol of your love and dedication.”
Glaberson is currently in the midst of a $200,000 overhaul of the building, which had started to crumble after years of disuse. While most of the 6,400-square-foot building will serve as a warehouse for his business — which will still sell online and through the mail — 1,500 square feet of storefront will be used as a gallery and a retail outlet
Glaberson hopes to use the gallery space to host movie screenings, celebrity signings and other events. He's also excited to work alongside Berwyn's existing memorabilia shop, Horrorbles, which focuses on sci-fi and slasher movies and is known to host similar events.
“With Horrorbles and Berwyn’s Toys and Trains, Berwyn is getting a reputation of having a collectors community,” Glaberson said. “There were a couple of stores like this in Chicago and they've all for one reason or another disappeared. I’m hoping that this will draw people from all over Chicago.”
Through his decades in the business, Glaberson has garnered a reputation for rare finds. He's made several finds believed to be one-of-a-kind, including an insert of The Invisible Man that sold for $87,000, he said.
Surrounded by creativity through most of his adult life, Glaberson also is making his own contribution to the art world. His new endeavor, which he calls The Dialogue Project, aims to merge the sequential art of comic books and the florid prose of poetry.
So far, the project has concentrated on public domain poems and famous graphic novel authors. He's already completed works by William Shakespeare, Jean Baudrillard and Emily Dickinson.
Oak Park resident Corey Glaberson took Mark Twain's advice of making your vocation your vacation to a new level.
After more than 20 years of traveling dozens of American cities and several countries to sell classic movie posters and memorabilia, Glaberson will open a storefront to house Reel Art, which had previously been an online and mail order memorabilia retailer.
The new business, which is slated to open in May at 6727 Stanley Ave. in Berwyn, will concentrate on what Glaberson calls “paper ephemera,” such as old magazines, comic books and other artifacts of pop culture's past.
“Collectors love that idea of vintage, that idea of holding something in their hands that was there at the time back in the ‘30s,” said Glaberson. “It's important to have some symbol of your love and dedication.”
Glaberson is currently in the midst of a $200,000 overhaul of the building, which had started to crumble after years of disuse. While most of the 6,400-square-foot building will serve as a warehouse for his business — which will still sell online and through the mail — 1,500 square feet of storefront will be used as a gallery and a retail outlet
Glaberson hopes to use the gallery space to host movie screenings, celebrity signings and other events. He's also excited to work alongside Berwyn's existing memorabilia shop, Horrorbles, which focuses on sci-fi and slasher movies and is known to host similar events.
“With Horrorbles and Berwyn’s Toys and Trains, Berwyn is getting a reputation of having a collectors community,” Glaberson said. “There were a couple of stores like this in Chicago and they've all for one reason or another disappeared. I’m hoping that this will draw people from all over Chicago.”
Through his decades in the business, Glaberson has garnered a reputation for rare finds. He's made several finds believed to be one-of-a-kind, including an insert of The Invisible Man that sold for $87,000, he said.
Surrounded by creativity through most of his adult life, Glaberson also is making his own contribution to the art world. His new endeavor, which he calls The Dialogue Project, aims to merge the sequential art of comic books and the florid prose of poetry.
So far, the project has concentrated on public domain poems and famous graphic novel authors. He's already completed works by William Shakespeare, Jean Baudrillard and Emily Dickinson.
“I see it as a tremendous crossover of people who like comic book art and people who like poetry, and both of them can learn something about the other genre,” Glaberson said.
As most media are moving away from paper and into the digital age, it's affected the cottage industry around movie posters. (Some theaters overseas have moved to digital screens to show what's playing.)
While Glaberson concedes that may cut into his business, he also believes it could push people toward a nostalgic love of physical artifacts.
“As movies themselves move out of the theaters and into people's personal space, they're going to have a desire to talk about these things, and they might find that outlet in these movie posters and memorabilia,” he said. “Whatever medium it is in the future, I'll try to supply that for them.”
