The Crap Store

Rotofugi Designer Toy Store & Gallery, established in July 2004, is located on the border of Chicago's Lincoln Park and Lakeview neighborhoods in a beautiful vintage building. Since opening, Rotofugi has grown to become one of the world's premier sellers of designer toys from artists all over the world. Rotofugi features a diverse selection of vinyl figures, capsule toys, plush and more from both eastern and western designers. The adjoining Rotofugi Gallery features monthly art exhibits by a range of both local and nationally known artists. Beginning in late 2007 Rotofugi partnered with Chicago based product development specialist Squibbles Ink to begin producing artist-designed figures by the talented designers located in their home town. Click here for more information on Squibbles Ink + Rotofugi projects. Rotofugi is owned and operated by husband and wife duo Kirby and Whitney Kerr. You can find the couple in and around the store on most days. They love to talk about toys and art. Giclée (pronounced "zhee-clay") is a neologism for the process of making fine art prints from a digital source using ink-jet printing. The word "giclée" is derived from the French language word "le gicleur" meaning "nozzle", or more specifically "gicler" meaning "to squirt, spurt, or spray". It was coined in 1991 by Jack Duganne, a printmaker working in the field, to represent any inkjet-based digital print used as fine art. The intent of that name was to distinguish commonly known industrial "Iris proofs" from the type of fine art prints artists were producing on those same types of printers. The name was originally applied to fine art prints created on Iris printers in a process invented in the early 1990s but has since come to mean any high quality ink-jet print and is often used in galleries and print shops to denote such prints. Scott Listfield (b. 1976, Boston, MA) is known for his paintings featuring a lone exploratory astronaut lost in a landscape cluttered with pop culture icons, corporate logos, and tongue-in-cheek science fiction references. Scott studied art at Dartmouth College, for which his parents have finally forgiven him. After some time spent abroad, Scott returned to America where, a little bit before the year 2001, he began painting astronauts and, sometimes, dinosaurs. Scott has been profiled in Wired Magazine, the Boston Globe, and on WBZ-TV Boston. His work has also appeared in New American Paintings and Surface Magazine. In 2010 he was named a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant finalist, and was the official artist of 2011 Boston First Night. He has exhibited his work in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Miami, Boston, and many other charming places.