The (Sculptural) End is Near

The public art sculptures of the 2005-2006 Lincoln Park Community Art Initiative will be installed in my neighborhood this Sunday, May 15. (See some previous posts on LPCAI here, here, here.)

Below is a final glimpse at two of the four remaining pieces of the 2004-2005 exhibit. (Terry Karpowicz's "And the Wheels Go Round," which stood on the corner of Dayton and Clybourn, and Ted Garner's "Upper Cutted" on Clifton and Marcey, were taken down before I could see them and photograph them.)

Here is Barry Tinsley's "North Star" that the LPCAI site says is made out of stainless steel. It sits on the east side of Wells Street where it intersects with Burton.



This sculpture photographs better than it currently looks in real life. The piece rusted or (maybe) oxidized (?) all over the sidewalk giving it the unintended affect of looking messy. It doesn't show up on the photo very well, but I thought the mess kind of screwed with the cool geometric shaping it has going on and the wonderful relationship of the color of the statue with its surroundings. Sometimes sculptures' unintended lives can be cool. But, in this case, the rusty seepage just looks like the work couldn't hack the long winter. I still like its heavy flatness, funky angles and compassy theme, though.

Here is "Happy Family" by Shen Cheng Xu. This sculpture sits on the east side of Halsted, just south of its intersection with Lincoln Avenue and Fullerton.



Due to its site, the sculpture is a de facto part of the Children's Memorial Hospital campus. It also stands very close to a sculpture that Children's erected last year in the small, triangular park at the corner of Halsted and Lincoln. I don't have a picture of that sculpture, but all you need to visualize is a bronze, life-sized group of children playing ring-around-the-rosey and looking happy. Not my favorite work for a lot of reasons, but it's permanent, so there's no point in grousing about it now as I'd like to get this posted before the trucks carry these LPCAI works away.

A better fitting title for "Happy Family" might be "Happy Family meets Lord of the Flies." Heads on sticks, particularly a smiling, family's heads on tree branch sticks near a children's hospital, creep me out. Can't wait for this one to get out of the 'hood.