LOGAN SQUARE — Busy Beaver Button Co. will throw its 15th Button-O-Matic party this week with button art featuring one of the most popular and iconic designs: the smiley face.
“Smiley Buttons” is a curated collection of wearable art buttons for the 15th edition of Button-O-Matic, a gumball-style button vending machine at the center of Busy Beaver’s Original Artist Series.
The series makes its official debut Oct. 3 during the Button-O-Matic Release Party and will be available for 50 cents each via Button-O-Matic vending machines across Chicago until September 2015.
For this year's Button-O-Matic series, Busy Beaver asked 10 artists to re-imagine the smiley button, a design portrayed in a myriad of themes and styles in popular culture over the last 50 years, from contemporary and nostalgic to trippy and conservative.
Smileys are among the most iconic images in the century-long history of the pin-back button, according to the Busy Beaver crew. The 1960s and '70s saw the production of millions of smiley buttons and the psychedelic smiley became an icon of the counter-culture movement, as well as hippie nostalgia of the 1990s.
These days, smileys are ubiquitous in digital culture as emoticons and emojis.
The 2014 Button-O-Matic series continues this eclectic tradition with buttons designed by Tuesday Bassen, Laura Berger, Cortney Cassidy, Anya Davidson, Penelope Gazin, Phil Guy, Tim Lahan, Jay Lynch, Chris Uphues and Carrie Vinarsky.
"I just really like the idea of wearing something that is spreading some good vibes around,” Berger said. “We need more of the good vibes and less of the bad ones in the world."
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