Update: As of October 30, 2022, I’d seen all of the Human+Nature sculptures by Daniel Popper at Morton Arboretum.
I woke up with a charley horse in my right calf. Then I put weight on my straightened right leg and quickly took it off. When that nerve isn’t happy, I’m not happy — or able to stand or walk. I settled in with Stacy Schiff’s The Witches and tried to baby my leg for a few hours. Then for a few hours more.
That didn’t work, and my inactivity made me feel guilty.
Finally I dragged myself out. After a brief rest in the campus park a block away (yes, that’s sad) I decided I was up to walking to Nickels Arcade.
On the way I passed the State Theatre. I like the old-school tile although I’m not tall enough to capture the entire name. It looked like the theatre had been taken over by a Target store, but I found out later Target had replaced another retailer in the building, Urban Outfitters.
Coming attractions for the Michigan Theater (note ”er” vs. ”re”) down the street (Liberty):
I reached Nickels Arcade and thought I’d check out the Peace Corps medallion Roadside America claims is nearby. That required walking several more blocks south on State Street (hint, Roadside America: No, it’s not near University). I found the building but didn’t have the steam left to go around it to find the medallion. I’ll regret that, I’m sure. Well, here’s a Nickels Arcade marker instead:
I did spot this other Roadside America attraction across the street — it’s hard to miss. Whimsically called “See No Evil” by Roadside America, it seems especially appropriate for the times.
Another sculpture dominated the museum’s lawn.
Finally I limped back to Nickels Arcade for iced coffee and a cookie at Comet Coffee, to Sava’s for a drink and dinner, and to the park area for a bit of shaded rest before limping back to my room.
I don’t think I ever posted this marker before. It’s across Huron from the bed and breakfast.
5,171 steps so far at 20:24. I would have sworn it was at least 7,500. Each painful.
Tom Friedman’s 33.3-foot Looking Up, made of baking pans and other aluminum goods, attracts attention on the south lakefront in Chicago at 47th and Lake Shore Drive.
I had to do what almost every passerby does, sooner or later.
I don’t know the history of the murals under the 55th/Lake Park overpass, but I’m under the impression that they predate my 1979 arrival in Hyde Park by a couple of years. They may have been relatively new and fresh, but even then they struck me as depressing and disturbing. I’ve never read the narrative in its entirety, but “butcher’s hooks” still sticks with me. The people pictured, many contorted with their heads thrown back, look tortured to me, as though their creator were a contemporary if less fantastic Hieronymus Bosch.
I understand that for some time there had been a search for the artist. With so much information online, you’d think she’d be easy to find, but not so. At long last, however, it seems that she turned up. I saw her, or someone, refreshing the mural at the northeast end of the overpass. Later, as winter approached, a handwritten paper sign appeared with thanks to the neighborhood and a promise to return. Sadly, by season’s end the sign had weathered the winter better than the mural, its bright, touched-up sections already streaked from the melting snow, rain, and dampness. As others have noted, while the idea of viaduct murals seems like an attractive addition to urban life, their practicality is another matter.
Even later, toward the southwest portion, large sheets of steel imprinted with black-and-white and colorful artwork were bolted up around the entrance steps to Metra. I also spotted a young man working on the uncovered southwest end of the mural, which for now looks like new.
So the viaduct’s walls are currently a mishmash of restored, faded, and, in places, obliterated mural and spanking new sponsored sheet metal print art, all without any explanation.
It keeps us coming back to find out what’s next.
Update: Here’s part of the story of the murals from the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference site. The murals on the north and south sides are different. The south side mural, the more fascinating to me, is pictured.
Caryl Yasko is redoing one panel of Under City Stone on 55th this year — more will follow next, more money is being raised. Note that there was improper grouting allowing continued water seepage. This is the mural that uses James Agee’s poem (by permission). Most will be redone in oil as per the original. Pulling together contributions and in-kinds is Mary Guggenheim. Heritage Foundation’s Rescue Public Murals initiative is involved. Hundreds are helping. Can send contributions c/o CPAG, 1259 S. Wabash, 60605, 708 655-8919 or undercitystone@gmail.com. Yasko writes:
Yasko first painted “Under City Stone” in 1972. The name of the mural comes from the James Agee poem “Rapid Transit” which runs the length of the north side of the 55th Street underpass. It was one of the Chicago Mural Group’s first projects. Funding came from the National Endowment for the Arts, Hyde Park Merchants Association, and citizen donors. With funding from the South East Chicago Commission and Chicago Public Arts Group, we are restoring one of the murals’ 13 sections. Contingent on funding and support from you, we will restore the remaining sections in summer and early fall 2009.
Mural on the south side of of 55th has undergone some restoration by Damon Lamar Reed, and work continues along with column restoration on 56th south side.
These photos are from a Friday trip with J. to the the Chicago Botanic Garden to see Wonderland Express, about which I knew nothing. The walk through Chicago in natural miniature was followed by dinner with another friend at Don Roth’s Blackhawk in Wheeling and an evening of art and conversation over coffee. A walking tour of Tuscany or Scotland would be grand, but in the meantime life, or at least my life, doesn’t get better than this.
Saturday J. and I went to the 57th Street Art Fair, arriving around 50 minutes before closing. I have a one-sided love-dislike relationship with art fairs:
On the love side:
In the dislike column:
The weather forecast called for rain, but at least on Saturday the clouds held off. There weren‘t the crowds I remember from a hot, sunny day a few years ago. It may have been the threat of rain and the relative coolness of the air, the proximity to closing time, or the state of the economy, but there was a lack of people and energy, I felt.
J. and I have very different browsing styles, which can be challenging. And I didn‘t see anything that stopped me in my proverbial tracks. I should have gone with less of a hope of finding something because I was disappointed in my mission.
One thing made me smile, though, despite it being fundamentally a little sad. One artist was accompanied by a beautiful little dog with little or no use of its hind legs. When the man went for a walk, he strapped the dog‘s back legs onto a little car with wheels. While those legs dangled uselessly from their straps in the air, his good front legs pulled him and his wheels along. The dog, who otherwise spent his time lying on a blanket behind the display, seemed content enough with this arrangement, strange as it may at first look.
We went to 57th Street Books with its 20 percent sale for members, and such were my mood, purse, and space issues that I didn‘t buy anything. This has to be a first.
Not surprisingly, Medici on 57th was crowded, with a 15-minute wait, but the spinach and goat cheese pan pizza was worth it. It gave us the strength to start going through some of J.‘s papers. Even though they aren‘t mine, filling a bag with the nonessential ones and dropping it down the chute was satisfying and cathartic.
Saturday evening, after stuffing ourselves at Bonjour Bakery Café, J. and I hopped on the bus and went downtown for Art on Track, which I had learned about from Puppet Bike. Art on Track consisted of eight elevated cars circling the Chicago Loop, with each car representing a local gallery. This is the type of idea that draws people, especially young ones, to the city; you’d never find an energized bow to creativity like this in Arlington Heights. Kudos to the CTA for being open to the idea and to those who worked with them to make it happen.
Art on Track was surprisingly well organized, especially for a first-time event. A small chalked sign at the bottom of the Adams/Wabash elevated stairs let us know that we were in the right place, and extra CTA staff directed us to a table where we paid $5 apiece for admission bracelets. Another employee whisked us through the gates, and one on the platform made sure people knew which trains on the various routes had come in so hapless travelers wouldn’t find themselves on Art on Track. One of them gave us an idea of when Art on Track was due at this starting point.
The Art on Track crowd was not difficult to spot, bracelets and buttons aside. With a few middle-aged and older exceptions, they were young, pierced, and tattooed, and most were Caucasian. Probably many if not most are involved in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Far from being driven geniuses toiling in lonely garrets, Chicago’s young artists seem to be highly social. I wonder if the young Manet, Monet, Gauguin, and others were as much of an obvious type to their neighbors.
A “You are here” graphic in each car showed where we were in relation to the rest of the train, and which car was occupied by which studio. I think we began two or three cars from the back. The train stopped at each platform in the circuit so participants could change cars.
Our primary objective was the Peter Jones Studio and Gallery car, but we made it onto every car, some twice or more. The most memorable car featured pallets of grass strewn with flowers and guitarist/singers performing 1960s-style music on topical subjects (along the lines of a Dylan). Another car was decorated with garish posed photos of transvestite performers and particularly evil-looking clowns who made any Batman movie version of the Joker look tame. In a third car, musicians sporting face and body paintings of death images sang what I guessed to be Mexican songs. Painted paper plates were affixed to the ceiling of one car, and others had hanging (punching?) bags and other material pieces. Of course, there were some paintings, and Alan Emerson Hicks had brought at least two of his melted plastic sculptures.
In such narrow, crowded space, it was difficult to get a good look at anything, including artists’ names, but perhaps that was not the point. Maybe the idea was simply to acknowledge the growing young artist community spawned by the Art Institute’s expanding school and to energize them with their own event — not as big as Looptopia, but still important enough to be sanctioned by the city.
Early on, I observed a student/freelance photographer/makeup artist approach and older man, apparently a gallery owner or representative. Pleasantries were exchanged, followed by business cards. That was the point as well.
If I were to plan an Art on Track II, I would do at least one thing differently; I would dedicate one or two cars to the musicians and performers and have them take turns. Aside from the space constraints, I found that they distracted me from the non-lively arts. I would also add something for children, at least for the first hour or two, something that would appeal to families and add some diversity.
On another note, at one point I kneeled on my left knee on a seat without thinking and was reminded suddenly and painfully that I fell on it hard last Tuesday; it’s still black, blue, and green. I’ve been so worried about my teeth that I haven’t paid attention to my knee, which for some reason didn’t bother me as much as usual on the elevated stairs. I felt it today; I don’t know how to describe it, but the kneecap feels “squishy” compared to my solid right kneecap. It occurred to me today that I should make an appointment with my physician to see if an X-ray is in order. Aside from soreness to the touch (explained in part by the impressive bruise), the oft-insulted left knee seems to be functioning, but clearly it’s not like the other, and I suppose now is the time to see if anything can be done to minimize the long-term effects. Somehow I see a knee replacement in my future . . .
It’s been more than a week since J. and I attended the first of three dates with Puppet Bike. It’s been a busy week, with health problems (Hodge’s), angst (mine), and exhaustion (mine). But I need to give the puppets their due — after all, it is the five-year anniversary of Puppet Bike, a Chicago phenomenon that I’ve only recently discovered.
First, I should mention that, in adulthood, especially middle adulthood, I’ve become reclusive. It’s not something I strive for, and my best guess is that it’s an attempt to avoid the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. You can’t be wounded if no one knows where you are — or that you exist.
The puppets make me smile, so I agreed to go to the Friday night party.
This is stranger than it sounds. While J. has met a couple of the puppeteers, and I’ve met one — the one who told us about the party — we would be going to a celebration where we would not really know anyone and where most of the attendees would be their friends. And I suspected many would be significantly younger. For an introvert like me, who felt lost at volunteer picnics where she knew most of the guests, this would seem to be at the least an exhausting thought.
I managed.
J. and I caught a 6:35 p.m. Metra train to the Ravenswood stop, then walked about a mile south. On the way, we passed a Napoli-style pizza restaurant. He said, “I wonder if the pizza there is any good?” and a voice responded, “It’s awesome!” A young woman smiled back at us as she passed.
Just when I wondered if J. could lug his heavy bag another step over the icy sidewalks, we found the Peter Jones Gallery. A young man on crutches and sporting a Morrissey T-shirt came over to greet us, calling us “super fans.” He is Brian Jones, the puppeteer we had tipped the week before. He had been able to see us, but we couldn’t see him. He said he’d broken some bones in his foot when he fell on ice. (And I’ve survived my numerous slips and falls — so far — intact.)
Later in the evening he showed us his portraits on the gallery walls and his portfolio of original comics characters. I found that refreshing because so many people draw the popular characters from the Marvel and DC universes and don’t try to come up with their own.
Of course, with so many puppeteers on hand, the puppets gave several performances (and took on many personalities). A few guests even tried their hand; some were actually very good. Not all!
With the theatrical (Black Forest Theater), musical, and karaoke entertainment, plus all the gallery artwork for perusal, we had a lot to do, and J. wanted to extend our stay until the last possible moment for him to catch his last train at 12:30 a.m. We dragged ourselves away at 11:20 or so. Reluctantly. I fell asleep on the el. J. tried to keep me awake.
With the theatrical (Black Forest Theater), musical, and karaoke entertainment, plus all the gallery artwork for perusal, we had a lot to do, and J. wanted to extend our stay until the last possible moment for him to catch his last train at 12:30 a.m. We dragged ourselves away at 11:20 or so. Reluctantly. I fell asleep on the el. J. tried to keep me awake.
Despite the lack of sleep, we drove back for the Saturday night party.
Upon arrival, I lost J. for a very long time. He was in the theater with his digital camera, enthralled by Environmental Encroachment. I had some beer, which I had not indulged in the night before, four altogether. I learned that three to four are enough to make me pleasantly tipsy.
But not tipsy enough to try karaoke. Despite the technician’s assertion that I should and that enough beer would put me in the mood (“It always does”), sober or drunk I know enough about my singing not to inflict it upon anyone. (Just in case, however, I had my song selected — “Riders on the Storm.”)
Although I watched many of the karaoke performances, including a particularly spirited rendition of the Steve Miller Band’s “Space Cowboy,” I escaped with my non-reputation intact — that is, safe in the knowledge that no one woke up the next morning wondering if they had been so drunk as to have imagined an off-key, hauntingly awful version of “Riders on the Storm” that would have killed Jim Morrison had he not already taken care of it.
In our wanderings, we learned that the bartender, an Eastern European whose name I’ve forgotten, alas, was the artist behind several of the brightly clad nudes in the front gallery. I liked them, and the plaid Packard-type car, and hope that she is able to sell them.
We were even more reluctant to leave than we were the night before; by Fridays, I am drained, physically and emotionally, but both of us felt much better after the day away from work.
On Sunday, conceptual sculptor Alan Emerson Hicks gave us a tour of his studio, explained his time machine in the front gallery, and told us more about Puppet Bike.
We left around 6 p.m. and decided to try the “awesome” pizza at Spacca Napoli. The wait was predicted to be 30 minutes or more, but we were greeted at the door with a sample slice each of pizza, which made it bearable. We ordered two different pizzas, one for dinner and one for later (in my case, lunch the next day). Both were good.
As we were in the general area, we couldn’t resist a stop at Julius Meinl, where we ordered coffee and crepes, Nutella for J. and strawberry jam for me. If Julius Meinl were in Hyde Park, I would live there. It was a satisfying end to a one-of-a-kind weekend.
But, as the last episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, reminds us: “All Good Things” (must come to an end). And so today Jason Trusty announced the end of Puppet Bike. I am saddened. In the broadest sense, it is a wonderful thing for Chicago, a city that needs more truly wonderful things. Closer to home, the puppets have helped me to stay sane during a very difficult time personally and professionally.
I will miss Puppet Bike, too.
Edit: J. T. relented. For now. Support your local PuppetBike!
For someone who jokingly calls herself a pretentious dilettante, I’m not very good at being one. Despite my appreciation of music, I have never liked ballet or opera. If pressed to articulate why not, I might say that both seem to me to be very artificial forms of expression. I like music, I like dance, and I like song, but when music is combined with song or dance and a story, it loses its connection to life as I know it and becomes a pretense, like much of the modern art that holds no appeal for me, either.
That can’t be the full explanation, however, as I do love a good stage or movie musical, and seven mountain men dancing at a barn raising or a silent film star singing and dancing with his umbrella partner aren’t realism, either. I’m also fond of symbolism, allegory, myth, and things that go bump in the night, that is, I’m not limited to the realism category.
There’s also the troublesome fact that I’ve seen one ballet (The Nutcracker, many years ago, when my employer provided us with free tickets) and no opera except for brief bits on TV, so my dislike has been based more on theory than on experience.
Now, however, I’ve seen an opera — Doctor Atomic at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
A friend who is an opera fan and Lyric season ticket holder had bought these tickets in addition to her subscription series. She thought that her husband might like a break from the opera, especially since Doctor Atomic is a modern opera, which generally is not to his taste.
Who am I to turn down a $176 ticket that I couldn’t afford to see something I’ve never seen?
I liked it. I would have liked an hour or so less of it better, I admit. Nearly three and one-half hours of sitting, with one break, tests my powers of physical endurance. Still, I liked it.
Doctor Atomic is the story of the race to build and test the “Gadget,” a discordantly innocuous name for the A-bomb. With a few exceptions, Peter Sellars adapted his libretto from the quotations and writings of the participants, as well as excerpts from poetry.
The scientists are headed by Renaissance man J. Robert Oppenheimer (Gerald Finley, baritone), who loves and quotes the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, while General Leslie Groves (Eric Owens, bass-baritone) leads the military. They were an odd pair in more than the obvious ways; during the project Oppenheimer’s weight dropped to less than 100 pounds, while General Groves’ photos reveal a distinct portliness that stretches his uniform to its limits. In Doctor Atomic, the testy general, concerned that Oppenheimer is going to have a breakdown, sings ruefully about his lifelong weight issues and his diet journal, in which he records transgressions such as two brownies and three pieces of chocolate cake.
Oppenheimer’s foil is Hungarian scientist Edward Teller (Richard Paul Fink, baritone), a cynic whose humor is black (before the test, he offers the team suntan lotion) and whose position is ambivalent. Pacifist Robert Wilson (Thomas Glenn, tenor) anticipates the 1960s activist, with his petition demanding that at the least Japan be warned of what is being planned.
On the principle that behind every good man is a woman, and behind every good opera is a soprano, Kitty Oppenheimer (Jessica Rivera) brings a human counterpoint to her husband’s outwardly stoic determination to complete the Gadget and the test. Meredith Arwady (contralto) plays Pasqualita, the Oppenheimer’s Indian nurse whose deepest tones seem wrenched from the heart of the earth mother herself. Military meteorologist Jack Hubbard (James Maddalena, baritone) offers most of the little comic relief as General Groves demands better weather conditions and threatens the junior officer with insubordination for refusing to promise to provide it.
Absurd as the general’s orders are, they are no more so than the very concept of an opera based on the development of the A-bomb seems to be. On the other hand, what better or bigger subject for an American opera? Like Frankenstein and other stories of man’s exploration of god-like powers, Doctor Atomic hovers between the genius of creation and the ethics of destruction. Oppenheimer understands the awesome power of the idea that he must make concrete, but disingenuously leaves it to the “men in Washington” and their wisdom to decide whether to unleash the bomb’s powers. These are enormous themes, carried over from the nineteenth century’s fascination with science; defining much of twentieth century life with its Cold War fears and anxieties; and seeping into the twenty-first century, when it is no longer just “men in Washington” and their communist counterparts but mad tyrants and terrorists whose fingers may hover over the nuclear button.
Oppenheimer, who dubs the test “Trinity,” calls upon the three-personed God of John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV:
BATTER my heart, three person’d God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow mee,’and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
*****
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you’enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.
It takes poetry from throughout the ages, from the Bhagavad Gita to John Donne to Muriel Rukeyser, to address the timelessness and power of creation and destruction and man’s responsibility for both. Even as Oppenheimer, Teller, and Wilson grapple with ethics and expediency, targets are being identified for the “psychological impact” their destruction will have on the Japanese people — and on the watching world. Even as the team waits for the weather to clear, they cannot be certain that Trinity won’t burn off the Earth’s entire atmosphere. Somehow it is a risk that must be taken.
In the opera’s only romantic scene, Kitty Oppenheimer seems to represent the creative (and neglected) power of sex, while in Act II she seems driven to near-madness by visions of destruction (Rukeyser: “In the flame-brilliant midnight, promises arrive, singing to each of use with tongues of flame . . .”), even as Pasqualita, an Indian Gaia, nurtures her and her children — the future. Kitty quotes Rukeyser:
Those who most long for peace now pour their lives on war
Our conflics carry creation and its guilt . . .
Pasqualita, quoting Rukeyser, is prophetic:
The winter dawned, but the dead did not come back.
News came on the frost, “The dead are on the march!”
Doctor Atomic ends on what appears to be an anticlimax. The ensemble stretches out in self-defensive positions, much as children of the 1960s were taught do during air raid drills, save for two technicians who monitor the instruments. The test goes off quietly, leaving in its wake an intact atmosphere and a woman’s voice speaking in Japanese. We know what happened. Or do we? The history of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy is not yet over, and their legacy is not yet known.
As might be expected, the staging is stark, and so is the music. There are no lush orchestral moments, and little soprano and tenor brightness. The music is arrhythmic, somewhat discordant in places, and thoroughly modern. Various instruments are used as voices, and the singers are used as instruments, occasionally struggling a bit with what John Adams’ composition calls upon their voices to do. Conductor Robert Spano, whose intense face I could see clearly from my fourth-row seat, holds the orchestra together nicely throughout the nearly three and one-half hours.
I am not sure that Doctor Atomic has made me love opera, especially as it suffers from two faults that I associate with the art form — it is overly long and it is overwrought. I liked it, however, and to be fair in my judgment I will need to experience a more traditional production — one whose music and arias may stir my emotions as Doctor Atomic stimulated my intellect and interest in the fate of humanity.
Doctor Atomic
Music: John Adams
Libretto and direction: Peter Sellars
