Friday was a beautiful day in Chicago. On my lunch I walked down to Millennium Park (between the office and the Art Institute) to take a few pictures of the Cloud Gate, aka “the Bean.” It’s a large piece of art, shiny as a mirror, shaped like a bean, but a giant bean.

I found a crowd of people taking pictures. Its photogenic – as it always changing. A curved mirror, you can see the skyline, others, distorted as they approach, elongated then cloned into multiples . . .



And this from under:




I also found some exciting public art by MARK DI SUVERO, who is that? Well you can check, www.millenniumpark.org/documents/MicrosoftWord-DiSuvero.pdf


Johnny Seed looks like it walked a million years ago . . with the dinosaurs maybe.


the pieces up close






Johnny Appleseed - Millennium Park Chicago from john on Vimeo

++++++++ from afar






Johnny Appleseed by MARK DI SUVERO MILLENNIUM PARK 2007 2 from john on Vimeo




Its really large as well, a hodpodge of industrial refuse, two large steam shovels, giant rings, steal beams, it looks like the skeleton of the industrial age. But then I realizeed I had seen it before, not as an image or object; but described in the prose of George Saunders in The Brief and Frightening Reign Phil. The book is populated by giant shapes, they are the walking talking characters – with LOAFD of personality.

http://www.bookslut.com/fiction/2005_12_007305.php

http://www.reignofphil.com/map.html you will want to read it after this…..

Look at the video of JOHNNY APPLESEED by Di Suvero and think of Saunder’s characters:

Saunders wrote, of one of the less lovable creatures, Phil:

Phil had another problem, which was that the bolt holding his brain in position on his tremendous sliding rack occasionally fell out, causing his brain to slide rapidly down his rack and smash into the ground. This happened now. His brain slid down, fell off his rack, and rolled into a ditch.

Phil had a crush on Carol, who married another, Carol was:

He was captivated by her glossy black filaments and transparent oscillating membranes, the delicate curve of her exposed spine, her habit of demurely scratching one bearing with a furry glovelike appendage . . .

IS JOHNNY APPLESEED a subject of King Phil?? If not King Phil in some way??

Ah, a great Friday walk…..


Of course, I saw the Bean/Cloud Gate in 1957 a few weeks ago when I was tooling about the continuum in my TIME SHIP from Nieman Marcus’ X-mas Catalog:






TIME TRAVEL and the BEAN from john on Vimeo


hasta luego,
JUAN