Maple Acer

This wooden sculpture is located in front of Saint Luke Evangelical Church and Academy at 1500 W. Belmont Ave. Titled "Table Acer," the form is meant to resemble the maple seed pods, or acers we all know as "spinners" that flood the ground every year, filling gutters, covering gardens, and wedging themselves into the nooks and crannies of the city that are almost impossible to sweep clear. (You can find hidden spinners in between the deck boards of any wooden deck in Chicago if you look closely enough.) This sculpture by Chicago artist Berthold Boone, carved from a single piece of maple, is intended to reference its symbolic "parent" tree, the giant maple you see located on Greenview Ave. just north of the corner. In this, it can clearly be understood as referencing the cycle of life, and providing a monument to the power and pervasiveness of the maple. However, without knowing this source, my first thought on this sculpture when I approached it was that it looked like a foot. The rough-hewn chisel marks all over the sculpture even seem to resemble the unique pattern of epidermal ridges we use to identify individuals. I saw this wooden footprint initially as a symbol of Jesus different from the cruciform normally in front of a church. Instead of commemorating his gruesome death and sacrifice, it seemed to symbolize his travels, the foot-worn path he took to find others who would carry his message to the world. Maybe this evangelical church is using the maple as a symbol of Christ's power and pervasiveness. Like the maple, his feet are dense and hard, his seeds are everywhere, and like the spinners, those who carry his message are not easy to sweep away.

Clemente Mosaic

This mosaic portrait of Roberto Clemente sits on the east lawn of Roberto Clemente High School on Division St. just east of Western Ave. It was installed in 2004 as an Architreasures community project in collaboration with teachers and students at the school. Architreasures was founded in 1996 as a non-profit community-building organization to facilitate grass-roots development of community assets, including art and architectural elements in public places and schools. This installation serves both as a mosaic double portrait of Clemente and Martin Luther King, Jr. (on the other side) and as a bench (also on other side). The portrait of Clemente, facing northeast toward the Division/Oakley intersection has the word "GIVE" in the background field surrounding the portrait. The King portrait has the word "SPEAK" written across the forehead. The mural panels are meant to be inspirational, and to serve as a bridge between the school and the surrounding community. Students at Clemente partnered with AIA Young Architects under the auspices of Architreasures to design and build the wall, bench and mosaics. This collaborative process is empowering for young participants, and the resulting product, though small in scale, lives on (in great condition after 5 years) as a visual reminder that every person has something to say and something to give to the community. They have only to put forth the effort. Speak. Give.

Charles Gustavus Wicker

The current thaw allowed me to take a stroll in Wicker Park recently. This bronze monument to Charles Wicker was installed in 2006 as part of a huge face-lift in the park including new children's playground facilities, refurbishing of the fountain, and general improvements to the garden, fieldhouse and grounds. Jeff Huebner recently wrote a great article about this sculpture in the historical context of the park, the Wicker family, and the Chicago labor movement for the Beachwood Reporter. Check out his article to find out all about it. In deference to his superior coverage, I'll reserve my comments here to my own reaction to this statue as I encountered it... The figure of Wicker is short, but stout, shrouded in a huge long-coat and topped with a giant stove-pipe hat, captured sweeping the bronze floor of his own pedestal. He sports a Lincoln-like beard, which in combination with the hat makes him seem like a pudgy child all dressed up as his hero, Abraham Lincoln, but stoicly dedicated to his task. The figure is neither graceful nor powerful. It is just there. He seems to stand for a chore, a cleanup that needs to be done, but which has no glory or fame attached to it. I associated him then with the recent renovations done in the park, the cleaning up of this little part of the garden in a city. (Can we change our motto to horto in urbs? It seems more realistic than the obverse.) The rectangular concrete base on which he stands is but a little swath of the vast urban grid all around this little pocket of green. As represented in this statue, Wicker comes off as an everyman with broad shoulders and steely gaze, staunchly aspiring to hero status for doing his tidy little civil duties. The real history of Wicker is more complex and conflicted, but suffice it to say, the artist, being Wicker's great-grandaughter(!), has probably portrayed him in exactly the light he would want to be. The sweeping figure of Wicker appropriates a working-class countenance to effectively clean away the memory of labor-movement ("anarchist") activity in West Town, which was until recently signified by the Lucy Parsons (of Haymarket Riot fame) memorial across the park, by usurping the working class ethic for the body of the land-owning class.