A mystery appears in Rogers Park
Instead, in Rogers Park, life went on. Tom Heineman lives across the street from the orb. He eyeballs it from his window. He sits on the Greater Eastlake Terrace Advisory Council, so people ask him questions about the neighborhood all the time, and when the orb landed ... “I got a call right away: ‘What the hell’s going on, Tom?’ What is it?”
It came on Halloween, some said. No, it came on Election Day, others said. Spooky, either way.
That it chose Juneway Beach Park on Eastlake Terrace, the last block at the north end of the city, felt intentional yet surprising. This is a splotch of green often overlooked, a blur for commuters on the way to Lake Shore Drive. And the neighborhood tends to prefer it that way. It’s a peaceful spot. Photographer Vivian Maier, who lived nearby, sat on a bench here often. In summer, families barbecue here; New Year’s Eve, revelers shoot fireworks from its beach — all .33 acres of it. A curious spot for alien technology to roost.
Faced with something they did not understand, though, the people of Eastlake Terrace did not attack the orb or proselytize End Times. They let their dogs sniff it. Within days, some used it as a meetup spot with fellow joggers. And many were decided — they liked it.
They gave it nicknames: Little Bean, Tiny Bean, North Bean, Pinball. Victor Hilitski, walking Bjork, his Jack Russell terrier, said: “I think I see it more as — what do call you those things in a mix of vegetables, not a bean, but it comes with rice, it’s like a ...?”
Pea?
“The Pea!”
On a frigid morning, Janna Lombardo, walking her dog Junior, said: “I call it the Cloud Gate of the North Side — but sarcastically.” Shannon Burns, who lives next to the orb, said, noting its pedestal, “No — it’s a Christmas tree ornament driven into the ground.”
Patrick Kennedy owns one of the apartment buildings on the street and can be found often sitting on a bench in nearby Rogers Beach Park with his dog Penny Lane. He listened and added quietly: “My first thought was, OK, how long until it gets vandalized?”
“Oh come on, Patrick,” Burns said. “I like it,” he replied, “I just think most people here need to know ... the meaning of it?”
Some neighbors did call Joe Moore, alderman of the 49th Ward. They were told, more of less: Fear not. It is, alas, an artwork. It means you no harm. It was brought to this planet to herald ... well, the north end of Rogers Park, to serve as a welcoming marker. And it was not done. Indeed, call the alderman’s office to ask about the orb, and you hear that it’s not just an orb! That soon it will get a matching orb at the traffic island where Devon Avenue, Broadway and Sheridan intersect, marking a south entrance to Rogers Park. It is all part of the “50 X 50 Neighborhood Arts Project” presented a year ago by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events to add at least two new works of public art to Chicago’s 50 wards. Aldermen were asked to contribute $10,000 from the $1.3 million they receive for capital improvements; each ward that agreed would receive a matching $10,000 from DCASE, allowing $20,000 for fresh public art.
A year later, some wards have murals. The 3rd received a solarpowered pyramid. The 48th selected a series of banners from Chicago artist Cheryl Pope, and the 27th will get a yellow-brick road.
Rogers Park got these orb things. But wait: By the end of Thanksgiving weekend, if plans hold, the orbs will receive complimentary pyramids — one for each orb. With windowpanes. Standing 20 feet tall.
Andy Hull’s kitchen window overlooks Juneway. Informed of the pyramids, he said: “What? How high? I thought it was an art installation. Some sort of minimalist thing.” He considered a new pyramid on top of a new ball. “Well, honestly, I thought at first: Will this take away from the natural beauty of the space? Because what’s great about is that it is so simple. Just park and lake. And now a pyramid, too? People do tai chi here.”
The neighborhood’s newest greeters, such as they are, already have actual names: “Quantum Dee” will live at Juneway Beach, and “Quantum Me” will be built adjacent to Loyola University (likely sometime next summer). Davis McCarty, however, the Avondalebased sculptor who worked on the installations for months, sounded delighted with the extraterrestrial connotations. The colored plexiglass he will install inside the pyramids — think stained-glass windows — is a material designed by NASA. McCarty, whose colorful, playful abstractions have stood inside Willis Tower and at the Burning Man festival in Nevada, likened the pyramidal piece of the work to spacecraft adopting thorny shapes to withstand the galaxy. He said the three sides of the pyramid will warp around the top of the sphere, reflecting off of the polished steel, presenting shifting colors and perspectives, “the way the universe can be infinitely big or infinitely small depending from where you stand.”
He said the orb represented an atom, and, referencing the mutability of the universe, the complete work will “give people a glimpse into something they sort of understand.”
Rogers Park wanted two.
Last year, McCarty made a PowerPoint presentation to a small panel of artists appointed by Ald. Moore. He laid out costs ($2,500 stainless steel sphere, $5,500 for plexiglass panels), brought to mind defining works like Cloud Gate and Buckingham Fountain and noted how the prismatic panes of his pyramids would invoke the vast diversity of Rogers Park. There was support from the committee to draw $20,000 more for a matching installation at Devon.
Moore said recently that, considering taste and the relative nature of public art, the process was surprisingly pleasant. Partly, he suspects, because “there has been a long desire (in Rogers Park) for something to reflect the fact that people were entering the city of Chicago and the neighborhood (from the north), and unless you knew that, there was no landmark that served to explain it.”
These markers, McCarty promised, would last a lifetime.
Roughly as long as a Chicago parking meter contract.
McCarty said that the day he installed the orb — just before Halloween — “some people from the neighborhood came up and asked what we were doing and I said I was ‘building a sculpture.’ And they said, ‘But why?’ So when I rephrased that to say I was ‘building a statue,’ they’d go, ‘Oh — OK.’”
Whatever it is, Burns said, “it’s freaking out the dogs.”
She wondered how Rogers Park could spend $40,000 on two artworks but leave the breakwalls at adjoining Juneway and Rogers beaches in questionable condition — indeed, winter poundings from the lake left large chunks precariously tilted. But she likes the orb. Kristin Werner, walking her dog, is good with it too but wondered how it would change the aesthetics of the park, particularly for those with apartments looking onto it. She also wondered if the city “communicated properly about what was coming.”
Consider the harrowing tale of Steven Singer.
Asked what he thought of the orb, he offered a mild, measured shrug. He seemed fine with it. “But my first encounter, I was walking the dog at midnight, normal routine, when I suddenly saw a flash of lake reflect off the ball. Scared the crap out of me. It came out of nowhere.”
Now, he said, “we’re just waiting to see what it becomes.”