A couple of years
ago you could see a beautiful oculus of a mosaic on the North Branch of the
Chicago River, entitled Rora. The lovely work won an Honor Award from the
American Society of Landscape Architects in 1999, and was the creation of Ginny
Sykes. Unfortunately, the section of the
work that could be seen from the river was removed due to the deteriorating
condition of the old Erie Street bridge abutment upon which it was displayed.
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| Rora by Ginny Sykes -- Locus Tree by Nature (JWB Photo) |
I had heard some
time ago that there was a way to see another work that Ginny Sykes had a hand
in, hidden under a viaduct at Fort Sheridan.
I got a chance to search it out on Tuesday when I paid a visit to the
old Army base, once my home, and nosed around a little bit. After limping down a three-story stairway, I
found it . . . beneath the Patten Road bridge that lifts that road over another
lane, now closed to automobile traffic, that used to carry cars full of bathers
down to the enlisted men’s beach at Fort Sheridan. This is now part of the Openlands Lakeshore
Preserve, which is R-E-A-L-L-Y cool. If
you have an extra hour or so, and you are up on the North Shore, this is one
little trek that you may want to consider.
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| The work is worth the walk (JWB Photo) |
Arc of Nature, which was placed there in 2010, is the
work of Ginny Sykes and Augusina Droze, working with the Chicago Public Art
Group. According to Ms. Sykes’s website
the work
. . . speaks to the particular ecosystem within the
ravine environment and the ongoing restoration work of the ravine. Meant to inspire and engage visitors as they
walk the ravine towards the lake, the mural suggests real and metaphoric
connections between the variety of human experiences of nature, as part of
nature, and that of nature within a larger cosmology. The breadth of scale of the work is meant to
suggest the sweeping sense of openness and peace that can be found in this
area.
It all works – all
of the glass tile, the painted surfaces, the aluminum rays – make sense. A bridge crosses over a road, a road that
once carried car after car down to the lakeshore. Looking at the work of art, you forget the
bridge as much as you are able, and you stand on a shaded and winding lane in
the bottom of a lakeshore ravine, within hearing distance of waves on the lake,
which occasionally get confused with traffic overhead.
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| Arc of Nature, Openlands Lakeshore Preserve (JWB Photo) |
As I stood there, I
remembered the old days, when this was a real road with cars carrying real
people, many of them dead now, down to the lake, so eager, I suppose for a few
hours in the sun, that they didn’t notice the nature that surrounded them.
At this place we
notice it now. And that’s a good thing.
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