Chicago: A City That Embraces Public Art

Ecologists say there is 100 percent chance you may live near coyotes in Chicago and the suburbs. The surprising fact learned from “City Creatures,” a book that introduces the astonishing diversity of wildlife in Chicago, is a public art inspiration for artist Annette Elliot.

"I am working on creating a site-specific public art project for Lincoln Park. My medium is light and video projections so I do a lot of shooting on location and post-production work in the labs at School of the Art Institute of Chicago where I teach,” Elliot said. “I’m thinking of focusing on some of the wildlife that manage to survive the industrialization and manage to adapt to this new environment.

The art piece will create live projections of wildlife, such as coyotes, deer and birds, in slow motion moving onto a natural surface such as foliage of trees, and reflected upon ponds in the park. Though still working to make sure the projector will be able to deal with cold temperature in the winter, Elliot plans to keep the project running for five years. Depending on the seasons, the changing shapes and colors of the leaves would add dynamic touches to the projection — the wildlife may seemingly appear and disappear from the projected surface.

“So that’s also my idea to try to shift people’s perception and bring to attention that something we pass by and ignore but exist in our environment,” Elliot said. She’s been working with wildlife groups that save and rescue birds that fly into skyscrapers and try to rehabilitate the birds.

Elliot’s commissioned public art piece is part of the 50x50 Neighborhood Arts Project as Mayor Rahm Emanuel, an art-loving leader who once trained to be a ballet dancer, has designated 2017 the "Year of Public Art.”

“The 50x50 Neighborhood Arts Project is a $1 million investment in Chicago's neighborhoods, building on Chicago's legacy of public art and enabling local artists to share their work with the world,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel, according to a news release from the Mayor’s Press Office.

The application of the project started in January when artists submitted their portfolio and a letter of intent. Fifty artists were selected – one for each ward - and their ideas were presented to the aldermen who made the final pick.

Elliot will consult Michele Smith, alderman of the 43rd ward, for advice on her art work and the location of the site in Lincoln Park. Boasting with both the relaxing landscape and the neighborhood that contains the zoo, conservatory, theater, museum and other cultural venues, the Lincoln Park fits well the theme of Elliot’s art piece — co-existence of the natural world within the industrialized space.

“There’s a shift in public art towards sites specificity,” Elliot said. “I think artists are coming from the point of starting with the sites and thinking about the community that lives there and the geography, and then designing the work that comes out of that and responds more directly to the sites.”

So, it is not surprising when Chicago installed artist Scott Reeder's provocative sculpture at the corner of Wacker Drive and Wabash Avenue last month. It is a 5-foot-tall sculpture that spells out the words “Real Fake” in gaudy gold letters right in front of the Trump Tower across the river. Reeder placed the work here as poignant commentary on the Trump administration’s rebranding of false statements as “alternative facts” and the President’s accusations of mainstream media as “fake news.”

“It’s very well placed,” said Tasha Farris, who works at a nearby architectural firm and was meeting her friend at the site.

“Bewilderedness,” commented another man, shrugging his shoulder and shaking his head while looking at the piece. He wouldn’t give his name.

“We do have public art in Netherland,” said Esther van Puffelen, taking a photo of her friend with the sculpture. “But I’m not sure they’ll let something like this happen in Netherland.”

“What’s wonderful about art is that it is completely open to interpretation,” said Christine Carrino, the communications director for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, according to a report on Chicago Tribune.

It has been an honorary tradition for the city to present controversial art pieces in public space ever since the famous Chicago Picasso unveiled at the Daley Center half a century ago. The soaring steel sculpture by one of the century’s best-known artists created an incredibly fertile ground for other great public arts to follow suit all over the country.

“The mayors of six other major American cities told a Chicago newspaper in 1967 that they would be delighted to have the Chicago Picasso or something like it by the master. New York, Detroit, Boston, Los Angeles, Houston, and St. Louis all expressed enthusiasm for such a work of public art,” according to Jerilyn Watson’s 1967 article in Chicago American.

In 1978, the Chicago City Council unanimously approved the Percent for Art Ordinance, which stipulates that a 1.33 percent of the cost of constructing or renovating municipal buildings and public spaces be devoted to original artwork on the premises and at least half of the commissions be awarded to Chicago area artists to provide opportunities to the local arts community. At that time, Chicago was one of the first municipalities, and the largest, to legislate the incorporation of public art into its official building program. Today, there are more than 200 similar programs throughout the United States, due in large part to the success of the Chicago ordinance.

Nowadays, the Chicago Public Art Collection includes more than 500 works of art exhibited in over 150 municipal facilities around the city, such as police stations, libraries, and CTA stations. According to a data analysis of current projects maintained by the DCASE, the total insurance value on the listed projects is $45.6 million.

The dynamic urban scene colored up by the public art pieces have attracted visitors from home and abroad.

“It’s fascinating to have public art in the city. It opens people’s mind,” said Roberta Caprini, visiting the city on an art study trip from Italy. “Compared to what we have in Europe, the public art in Chicago is more contemporary, and with more inclusion of nature and the city’s landscape.”

Caprini talked as she walked along the streets in the Loop with her friend. While she prefers Miro’s Chicago, a 39-foot-tall sculpture by Joan Miro, located at the Chicago Temple Building, her friend favors the Chicago Picasso right across the street.

The city hit new tourism record with 54.1 million visitors in 2016. And according to Choose Chicago, hotel room demand in the first half of 2017 has increased by four percent.

“Over the past six years, Chicago’s tourism industry has strengthened our city’s economy, allowing us to show off our world class city to leisure travelers and convention attendees alike,” said Mayor Emanuel in a news release of the Mayor’s Press Office.

Public art can take part of the credit. “Public art gives personality to the city,” said Marie-Judith Jean-Louis, a painter traveling with Urban Sketcher Symposium, a global community of urban sketchers that organizes sketching enthusiasts from all over the world to visit a different city every year. There are 570 artists joining this year’s symposium held in Chicago.

On her sketch-book, a drawing of people sitting and circling around the fountain in the Exelon Plaza on the Monroe Street, notes that “it reminds me of a bon fire.”

“Public art humanizes the city and gives people sense of community and inclusion,” said Debbie Thornhill, who is also on the symposium. She was drawing a painting of Flamingo, a 53 feet-tall red stabile located in the Federal Plaza. Thornhill appreciated the striking contrast between the art and the steel-and-concrete backdrop very much. “In Los Angeles, public art tends to be darker. It wasn’t woven into the urban landscape as here in Chicago.

Fifty years on since Chicago Picasso brought art into public space, the concept and practice of public art have evolved and developed but it has never failed its duty of opening hearts and minds.

“I feel like Chicago has long been a laboratory to experiment with ideas about public space,” Annette Elliot said. She recalled how her first large-scale public art project, created when she was a graduate student at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2012, launched a light installation on the dome of Garfield Park Conservatory to memorialize the hailstorm that shattered the roof the year before. Elliot’s projected images mimicked fissures of broken glass, visible from the surrounding neighborhood and the nearby Green Line. 

“For an artist who has no experience creating a public work before that, I feel that is a unique experience. Maybe not every city would allow you to play around in public spaces in that kind of way,” said Elliot, whose latest project in Lincoln Park will meet the public in the first week of October.