October 25, 2013
When this class trip was first announced, I have to admit I was a bit nervous. I am more of an introvert, and I hadn’t made very many friends– just a few acquaintances. I was very nervous about walking around a city I was not familiar with…. by myself. So, when it came down to the night before the trip, I made a Google Map trail around the city for galleries and museums I’d planned on going to the next day. The day started off with me arriving at Kresge at 6:20am in wait for the buses to take us to Chicago. I said, “planned” earlier because when I got there, I realized my schedule for the day was not going to work out exactly as I had thought. I only spent an hour and a half at the Art Institute of Chicago Museum, because I wanted to make sure I got the rest of my requirements done for the day. I saw pieces by one of my favorite artists, Claude Monet, and even found a couple other (new to me) artists that had pieces that I enjoyed, like Ralph Albert Blakelock. I also loved the Ancient Greek pottery in one of their exhibits– we were just talking about those in my Art History class before the trip. One of the first thoughts that hit me upon entering the museum was how huge it was, and while walking through it, it reminded me of the Louvre in Paris. I regret not staying longer, because I did want to see more of the artwork. However, I did get a pretty awesome coffee mug at the gift shop; it was black with signatures of some famous artists in white letters– I absolutely LOVE that mug.
After the museum, I set out to go West Loop, where there were supposed to be many galleries, one in particular called the “Mars Gallery” had me intrigued just because of the name. However, first I went to the Pavilion and to the Bean (Cloud Gate) and took a stereotypical picture of myself in the reflection of the massive sculpture. Jump back to where I said I was alone while navigating through the city, I was walking all the way over the Chicago River and had just gotten over the Eisenhower Expressway (at least I think that’s what is was called) when I started to get nervous. To get where I needed to go, I had to go past warehouse-type buildings, where old-ish men were stocking and unloading trucks and such. I was on a corner when two guys stopped what they were doing and tried calling me over to them, cat-calling and whistling, which, needless to say, made me very uncomfortable. All I could think was, “Okay, Jasmine, you need to get out of here and go back in town where there are more people and stores…..and people.” So I did just that and turned down the next street and walked back, stopping in at Jimmy John’s because I was starving. That was one thing that disappointed me though– I wasn’t really able to find a good a pizza place like my boyfriend (at the time) had told me to do. He’s from Chicago and swears by the pizza, hating pizza from pretty much EVERYWHERE else.
I had pulled out my phone while I was eating and typed in “Art Galleries in Chicago” into Google Maps and made the plan in my head to hit every art gallery I could that was near the museum. I ended up going to a few galleries that showcased student work from Columbia College. One gallery was called the Averill and Bernard Leviton A+D Gallery. One of the pieces they had was especially interesting to me. I was called “Rivals” and it was essentially and drum set made partially out of drywall. The artist had recorded a video loop (with audio) of him playing the piece and the all-but-destroyed final product was displayed. I think it was really interesting, especially that he played the drum set and you could see it start to tear, and snap and rip and break. It was a very cool piece. Afterwards, I went to Sullivan Galleries which was a bit confuisng to get to; the building looked like a fancy office building or something so I was a bit nervous to ask the man at the desk if there was in fact an art gallery in the building (believing Google Maps had lied to me). Low and behold, there was in fact a gallery, on the 7th floor but when I got there, it seemed to be under construction. There was an installation piece consisting of two different video loops projected onto large screens in a very VERY dark room. To get to the other pieces, you had to go down this short hallway. There seemed to be about half of the space being used for different pieces, as well as an artist working with one of the (I’m assuming) maintenance people, hanging up some of her pieces. From there, I went to Blick Art Materials, and bought myself another bottle of white gouache for my art and design class- very convenient. There were 8″x8″ paintings along one of the walls of store- one of which was a portrait of Johnny Depp as Edward Scissorhands! Love it! While walking around I saw this really cool piece of art that I think was part of a pop-up gallery. It was like a banner on a building of really random characters, completely animated. I also went to The Glass Curtain, which was another art gallery showcasing Columbia College student pieces. My favorite piece was actually the mosaic tile piece that was at the door to the gallery; students came together to make it and it was a beautiful piece that could be seen from outside. I went to the Museum of Contemporary Photography and saw a series of photo collage pieces of cities. I went to the Fine Arts Building and actually met one of the artists while viewing some of the pieces. I was done going to galleries at that point, wanting to go back to the Art Institute to walk around a little more before it closed at 5pm like the rest of the galleries in the area. On the way there, there was a public art piece called “Borders” that consisted of silver-colored and brown-colored sculptures of people that were so realistic and life-like that they seemed like living-statues. I genuinely thought they were real people and was nervous to get too close to them in case they were going to come alive or something.
When I got back to the museum, it was 4:30 and they stopped letting people enter to walk around, which was really disappointing because I had really wanted to spend more time in the museum. I was upset but I decided to warm up and get some soup. I went to Pret a Manger and bought a bowl of some really REALLY good lobster bisque AND I got lucky for being there when I was because about five minutes later, one of the employees walked around with full size warm wraps that featured two new flavors for FREE. I was pretty happy at that point. Having warmed up, I took my sandwich and went to sit by the Crown Fountain (The Face Fountain) and just people watched. There were so many little kids who were extremely fascinated by the changing faces; one little girl even laid down in front of one just to look up at it. I took a moment to sketch the area around me and then I went up the steps by the fountains to this public art gallery that I later found out was only one part of a two part gallery. It featured the artist’s (Jun Kaneko’s) signature Dangos. They were of all different colors and patterns and it was a really nice experience to walk through.
At this point, it was getting extremely cold and was about time to start heading back to the buses in front of the museums so I went and waited with some of the other students waiting to get out of the cold. the buses came and amazingly, they were very warm. The itinerary had us scheduled to leave Chicago at 7pm. There were a couple late people but that wasn’t a big deal. HOWEVER, we ended up waiting for an HOUR for one last person who never showed up at the buses, making a lot of us very unhappy. Regardless, we arrived back at the Kresge Center at 1am and the trip as a whole wasn’t bad at all. If there’s one thing I learned during that trip though, is thank God for Google Maps and Smart Phones. There is no way I would have been able to navigate myself around Chicago by myself without it. The trip was an amazing experience though, and I’m really glad I was able to go.
Jasmine Burks- Chicago Blog 