The Real Cloud Gate

By now, most Chicagoans have taken to calling Anish Kapoor's Millennium Park sculpture "Cloud Gate" simply "da bean." However, a component of the recently unveiled Adams-Sangamon Park in Chicago's West Loop District can claim to be an actual cloud gate. This installation of five staggered stainless steel rectangular arches actually exude a cloud-like mist when users push one of the red buttons on small posts at either end of the plaza. The park, designed by Site Design Group, has been in the works for years, but only just opened at the end of August, to the delight of West Loop loft-o-minium parents and dog-lovers. The park boasts numerous amenities, including the misting fountain, dog park, toddler playground, seating, contoured lawns and trees, in addition to innovative "green" features such as recycled rubber ground cover, pollution absorbing cement, and repurposed stone lintels from a demolished building previously on this site, which now serve as seating. The park, while undeniably a great amenity for neighborhood residents, was also quite expensive, reportedly costing the city almost $20 million, twice the per acre cost it normally spends to develop a park. It is unclear if Millennium Park was a direct inspiration to the design firm and neighborhood association that developed the park, but it appears to have influenced the outcome, from the reflective, interactive fountain component to the broad, straight stone and cement paths that cut through and connect the park's different use sectors. On a recent warm evening, the park was alive with jubilant neighborhood denizens, walking and playing with dogs, overseeing children's activities, and relaxing in the waning hours of sun, basking in the drifting cloud of cool water vapor emanating from the stainless steel gates.

These staggered metal sections also remind me of walking legs, of course on a much smaller scale of numbers than Magdalena Abakanovicz's "Agora" installation in Grant Park south of Millenium Park's "Cloud Gate." Adams-Sangamon Park, then, is a real, functional agora for the West Loop, and provides a real, functional cloud gate through which the public can walk, run, and frolic.

Green Misleadership

This globe sculpture by Jonathan Franklin is titled "Garden Variety." It is located in front of the Exelon (formerly Commonwealth Edison) Chicago North Regional Headquarters on N. California Ave. at Addison St. and is one of very few remnants of the "Cool Globes: Hot Ideas for a Cooler Planet" project in 2007. The original series of fiberglass globes were decorated by various artists and displayed for much of 2007 in the area between the Field Museum and Balbo Drive along the lakefront, with another group installed on the lawn west of Navy Pier. Several "teasers" like this one, were installed around the city, though not with the same city-wide pervasiveness of the "Cows on Parade" of 1999, which reportedly inspired this project. This globe depicts a lush urban garden on the slick surface of the 5-foot diameter orb, and is mounted on a concrete platform next to the main company sign in front of the building, serving in a way as a dimensional corporate logo. It should be noted that Exelon, based in Chicago, is a company that heavily markets itself as providing a "greener" or more sustainable future in energy, as the presence of this globe and the accompanying plaque, lauding the city of Chicago's "Green Leadership" suggest. However, even a cursory look at Exelon's practices reveals fundamental contradictions. For example, their television, print and web campaign to promote the diversity of sources of energy generation they promote, including renewables (The Exelon website front page is filled with windmills) is betrayed by their own pie chart showing the distribution of their sources as being 92% Nuclear, and only 2% renewable sources. Not much diversity, let alone sustainability there...The public debate on the "cleanliness" of nuclear energy rages on, but among real environmental activists (not energy providers) it is widely believed that nuclear energy is extremely harmful to the environment despite its lower carbon emissions relative to fossil fuel sources... Most of us remember Chernobyl, or even Three-Mile Island, which is now owned by Exelon, not to mention all the slightly less catastrophic examples of nuclear waste causing environmental hazards. Exelon had another recent scandal in Pennsylvania, in which it waited four years to reveal that tritium (radioactive hydrogen) had leaked into groundwater. And what happens to all the spent fuel rods and radioactive waste from nuclear energy generation? Can we keep burying it in concrete and metal, putting it in mountains or under the ocean? Maybe we can embed it into the fiberglass used to make these "Cool Globes." Then we wouldn't have to use the electricity required to light them at night. They would glow from within---Hey, even greener!

Angel of Halsted

I couldn't find any information about these cast concrete relief sculptures at the corner of Halsted St. and Division St. across from the Philips Towing yard. I only just noticed them a couple weeks ago, even though I have driven, biked or walked by the intersection probably a hundred times in the last few years. The first couple times I noticed them I assumed they were remnants of architectural decorative elements, but I couldn't see them very well behind the vines and bushes as I drove past. When I approached them on foot to look more closely, I was surprised by their subject matter and contextual details. The faded paint, crumbling bases, and overgrown state indicate they've been there for some time. They probably date from before the Cabrini Green complex began to be dismantled in favor of the many current "mixed income" townhouses in the area. There are three separate reliefs in front of a green metal fence on the southeast corner of the intersection. The relief on the right depicts an auburn-haired angel kneeling to place a plant into a hole in the ground in front of an overgrown chain-link fence with the Chicago skyline in the background. I wonder if the real fence behind the relief was chain-link when the sculptures were placed here. In the distance I could see the Hancock Tower and the Sears Tower through the fog, along with the rapidly rising Trump Tower, which is obviously missing from this earlier, condensed skyline in the upper right of the sculpture. The angel seems to belong to this site not only because of these background details, but because the plant she is gently lowering almost blends into the surrounding thick bushes and vines, and her gesture imbues this small patch of exposed earth amidst a world of concrete with the power to grow. If the angel on the right instills hope for a greener future, the dog on the left panel seems despondent even amidst the lush overgrowth. He looks to be standing next to a mature version of the plant the angel has planted, with another plant on the smaller panel next to him sprouting out of the ground. The dog is in fact positioned to be facing the angel, though his posture indicates an attitude more resigned to a fate of urban blight than one of spiritual and botanical renewal. He is sitting, slightly hunched, giant ears hanging limp, eyes and nose just downcast enough to project the hangdog air of an animal contained within a cage or fenced enclosure with no opening to freedom. These two panels are counterpoints to one another, and provide a realistic picture of a neighborhood with common urban problems. Is the angel a harbinger of nature's return, or rather of gentrification, planting seeds of Dominick's and Blockbuster and REI? Is the dog forever imprisoned here, or will he escape the concrete jungle, only to be trapped anew elsewhere for a time, then moved again and again in favor of still "greener" pastures? When and where will he find his forever home, and what angel can possibly guide and guard him there?