Jaume Plensa, Here and There

Posted on August 4, 2019 by admin

Here’s a line from The Sun Also Rises that I didn’t much appreciate until recently. In one of the many conversations among the protagonists, the subject of the character Mike’s bankruptcy is broached:

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”

A lot of things happen that way. Learning often happens that way. Or at least awareness. Fortunately, I don’t have the experience of bankruptcy in mind. Still, a minor example of gradually-suddenly just happened to me.

Back in 2008, we visited the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Mich. One of the works was by Jaume Plensa, “I, you, she or he…”
In 2014, I took note of Plensa’s monumental head, temporarily placed in Millennium Park in Chicago, “Looking Into My Dreams, Awilda.” I also knew at the time that the Catalan artist had also done Crown Fountain in the park as well.

Interesting that the vitriol against “Dreams” in the comments of this Chicago Reader item obsesses about the size of the head. When I happen across public art, I judge it by an admittedly subjective standard: does it make the space more interesting? By that standard, all the Plensas I’ve seen are successful works.

Today I was looking at pictures I’d taken in August 2013, and happened across these — two images of the same work in Chicago.
“Self Portrait With Tree,” by none other than Plensa. I’d forgotten about it, and when I took the picture, probably didn’t associate it with the other works of his I’d seen. “Self Portrait” was next to the Hancock Tower on E. Chestnut St. I checked the Street View of that block, dated July 2018, and the work is gone. It was put up by the nearby Richard Gray Gallery, so perhaps it found a buyer.

All that is the gradual part. Somehow or other, Plensa hadn’t made much of an impression on me over the years. But when I looked at the 2013 images, I suddenly wanted to know more about him, since I don’t make a close study of sculpture or public art. If I had, I would have known how widespread his works are. (Had we walked further along Buffalo Bayou in Houston in May, we’d have come across yet another.)

Is it important that I know this? Maybe, maybe not. But better to err on the side of knowing something, however small.

Idea Garden, Champaign

Posted on August 1, 2019 by admin

Besides Decatur, we spent some time over the weekend in Champaign, including a short visit to the Idea Garden of the University of Illinois Arboretum.

Back in the spring, the Idea Garden was mostly just that, notional, but since then volunteers have brought the place to full flower. Literally.
A small structure mid-garden was being used for an informal gardening class when we passed by. Something about garden pests. Sunflowers reaching to the sky. Taller than a grown human being. One of the volunteers told me it was a special kind that grows tall. Not a lot of gardeners like them, he said, but he did.

Elephant ears!
I have fond memories of large elephant ears when I was a child.
The picture is ca. 1970, of my brother Jim and I and the front-yard elephant ears. I might have been small, but that’s not why I remember our elephant ears as large — they were objectively large. That’s the way they grew for a few early years at our house in San Antonio. In later years, they came up smaller and eventually disappeared.

Scovill Sculpture Park

Posted on July 31, 2019 by admin

First, we drove across Lake Decatur on US 36. Later, we walked near the shore of the lake, though at that point a fence was between us and the lake.
We didn’t mind, because we were taking a late afternoon stroll on Saturday at Scovill Sculpture Park. As these things go, the lake is old — almost 100 years, a project of civic improvement that also happened to be very useful for corn wet-milling. A.E. Staley, of corn products fame (see yesterday), had a major hand in the creation of the lake by damming the Sangamon River upstream in the early ’20s.

On the other hand, the sculpture park, on Decatur Park District land between the Scoville Zoo and the Decatur Children’s Museum, isn’t that old — only about three years. Interestingly, the sculptures aren’t permanent fixtures, but leased from the artists. After a few years, a new crop is brought in. According to my sources, the second set of 10 is in place now.

“My Favorite Things,” by Travis Emmen.
“Calibration,” by Luke Achterberg.
“Absence,” by Joseph Ovalle.
“Urban Forest,” by Richard Herzog.
“Rybee House 2,” by Stephen Klema.

The park also includes the Scovill Oriental Garden, which has elements of Chinese and Japanese gardens.

Of course the park has a gazebo.
As well it should. Here’s a book or database for someone to create someday: The Great Gazebo Gazetteer.

Three Decatur Museums

Posted on July 30, 2019 by admin

Near (or on) Eldorado St. — one of Decatur, Illinois’ main streets — are three small museums. Two are former mansions, one is attached to a factory. I figured we had time for two on Saturday afternoon, but in the end we visited all three.

This is the former mansion of three-time Illinois Governor, U.S. Senator and Civil War General Richard J. Oglesby (1824-99).

I’ve encountered Oglesby, in bronze anyway, in Chicago. He grew up in Decatur and had a successful run as an Illinois lawyer, Union Army officer, and politician. He panned for gold in California, traveled in Europe in the 1850s, married at least one wealthy woman (not sure about his first wife) and knew Lincoln well — was in fact at the Petersen House in Washington City when the Great Emancipator died.

Designed originally in the 1870s by William LeBaron Jenney, father of the skyscraper, in the 21st century the mansion is resplendent, the work of decades of restoration.

The museum’s web site says: “The Library is the most significant room in the house regarding authenticity. It remains as it was built. All the wood is of native black walnut, with the exception of the parquet floor. The original shutters have been reproduced, and glass doors were added to the shelves which were on the architect’s drawings. The books in the cases are Oglesby family books.

“The dining room is the other area that is known to be correct. During the restoration, the complete decoration of the room was found, even the color of the ceiling and all the faux finishes. This room has been reproduced as it was during the Oglesbys’ time in the house.

“The dining room wallpaper was reproduced by a company that was making authentic Victorian wallpapers. All the walls with the exception of the hall and the library are covered with Bradbury and Bradury Wallpaper copied from papers of the time period.

“Furnishings in the home have been chosen for the time period 1860-1885. Most came from old Decatur families. Many of the pieces and the artifacts have come from Oglesby descendants.”

My own favorite artifact is tucked away behind glass: a 19th-century prosthetic leg, that is, a primitive wooden item purported to belong to Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón, Napoleon of the West, and captured at the Battle of Cerro Gordo in 1847 after said Napoleon badly mismanaged things.

The authenticity of the leg hasn’t been confirmed, however. Unlike the other one in Illinois. Per Wiki: “Santa Anna, caught off guard by the Fourth Regiment of the Illinois Volunteer Infantry, was compelled to ride off without his artificial leg, which was captured by U.S. forces and is still on display at the Illinois State Military Museum in Springfield, Illinois.”

Not far from the Oglesby mansion is the Hieronymus Mueller Museum, a different sort of place.
Mueller, as in the Mueller Co. These days headquartered in Tennessee, but for a long time a Decatur company. Even now the company has a factory in Decatur, which is next to the museum. Mueller Co. made, and makes, metal parts and structures and machines. Half of the fire hydrants sold in the United States are Mueller made, for instance.
But that’s just a part of the output. Many examples of the company’s products are on display at the museum, along with various exhibits about the German immigrant Hieronymus (1832-1900) and his many children and grandchildren.
The company dabbled in horseless carriages, but didn’t go whole hog into that.
It did its part in WWII.
Here’s Hieronymus in bronze. He was a whiz during the golden age of American invention.
The museum says: “He started his business with a small gunsmithing shop but soon added locksmithing and sewing machine repairs. He had a knack for understanding mechanical devices. This led to his appointment as Decatur’s first ‘city plumber’ in 1871 to oversee the installation of a water distribution system.

“The following year he patented his first major invention, the Mueller Water Tapper who [sic] is, with minor modifications, still the standard for the industry.

“He and his sons went on to obtain 501 patents including water pressure regulators, faucet designs, the first sanitary drinking fountain, a roller skate design, and a bicycle kick-stand. In 1892 Hieronymus imported a Benz automobile from Germany and, together with his sons, began refining it with such features as a reverse gear, water-cooled radiator, newly designed spark plugs, and a make-and-break distributor – all leading to patents.”

Our third and final small Decatur museum for the day: the Staley Museum, one-time house of Decatur businessman A.E. Staley.
Staley was neither politician nor inventor, but had considerable talents as a salesman and ultimately boss man of A.E. Staley Mfg. Co., which started out as a starch specialist and expanded into many other products, mostly made from corn and soybeans. As a child, I ate Staley syrup.
Among other causes, Staley (1867-1940) was a soybean booster. In the spring of 1927, he organized a train to publicize and facilitate soybean cultivation in Illinois, the Soil and Soybean Special.
As the promotional material with the map says, “This is a farmers’ institute on wheels. If the farmer can’t go to college, this college will come to him.”

Staley is also known for founding the football team that evolved into the Chicago Bears: the Decatur Staleys, a leather-helmet company team. Here they are in 1920.
The origin of the team isn’t forgotten. Even now, the team mascot is Staley Da Bear.

Here’s the boss man himself.
Looking every bit the ’20s tycoon. He also developed an office building for his company a few miles from the home. The structure was one of the largest things in Decatur at the time, and a stylish ’20s design it is (see page 5).

Later in the day, we drove by for a look at the office building from the street. It’s still a commanding presence in its part of Decatur, though like the A.E. Staley Mfg. Co., it’s part of Tate & Lyle, a British supplier of food and beverage ingredients to industrial markets.

Our Second Decatur This Year

Posted on July 29, 2019 by admin

On Saturday, I wondered how many U.S. cities and towns are named for Stephen Decatur. Later I looked it up: Counting Decatur City, Iowa, and a ghost town in Missouri of that name, 17 — not counting counties, of which there are six among the several states.

Now mostly forgotten except by the Navy and naval history enthusiasts, he had his moment. He even took a lethal bullet in a duel, though Commodore Decatur isn’t known as well as Alexander Hamilton for that distinction. Lin-Manuel Miranda needs to get on the stick and write Decatur: A Musical of Kicking Barbary Pirate Asses.

Decatur’s moment also happened to be when towns and counties were being named in the United States. Decatur, Illinois, has the largest population of any of them, edging out Decatur, Alabama by some thousands of souls, even though the Prairie State Decatur has been shrinking in recent decades.

We spent most of Saturday afternoon in Decatur, Illinois, our second visit to a city of that name this year. Though the more northern Decatur isn’t quite the industrial town it used to be, a number of large manufacturers are still in evidence, such as Mueller Co., more about which later. Downtown Decatur seemed in fair shape as well. Good enough for a walkabout late in the afternoon, when the heat was ebbing away.

Decatur’s signature structure is the Transfer House.
“The Transfer House was erected in 1895, replacing a smaller shelter dating from 1892,” writes H. George Friedman Jr., whose page features many pictures. “The City Electric Railway paid $500 toward the $2,700 building fund subscribed by local merchants and property owners, and agreed to furnish and maintain the building. As its name implies, it was used as a central transfer point for all the streetcar lines (and later the bus lines) in the city.”

Designed by W.W. Boyington, of all people. That only seems odd to me because we visited another one of his works just last week, the Old Joliet Prison. So there’s nothing really odd about it. The man got a lot of commissions.

Remarkably, the Transfer House was originally located at Main and Main streets — that always sought-after address, at least among commercial real estate investors. Decatur still has a north-south Main and an east-west Main, and their meeting looks like an ordinary intersection, though there is a statue of young A. Lincoln nearby.

In 1962, the city moved the Transfer House to its current location in Central Park, near a fountain.
The park also features a memorial to the Macon County’s Civil War soldiers.
On the back of the base, a plaque says:

Grand Army of the Republic
Organized in this city
April 6, 1866
Erected by Dorcas Society,
and Other
Patriotic Citizens

Not erected until 1904. Maybe funds were in short supply for years, but then the people of Decatur realized their veterans didn’t have much longer.

Near Central Park are a number of buildings, including this one sporting one of Decatur’s murals, featuring Mike Elroy, a recent mayor.
Driving into town we saw a more interesting mural featuring Bob Marley on the side of a record store building, but we didn’t stop for it.

A former Universalist church building, originally erected in 1854.
The handsome Merchant Street, formerly a hive of scum and villainy.

Further from the park was the equally handsome Library Block, home these days to a brewpub and other businesses.
The Decatur Masonic Temple, looking a lot like a WPA post office.
The First United Methodist Church of Decatur.
As with many city churches, it would have been nice to get inside for a look, but no go.

At first, I thought this might be the entrance to an eccentric dentist’s office, an oral equivalent of the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg.

But no: it’s the entrance to the Sol Bistro restaurant.

Oleg Tambulilingan Dance

Posted on July 28, 2019 by admin

A postcard I mailed from Bali in July 1994.

A lively, colorful work by Anak Agung Gde Sobrat: “Oleg Tambulilingan dance.”

The Neka Museum in Ubud, now known as the Neka Art Museum, had this particular work on display at the time.

The Danish Cemetery, Lemont

Posted on July 25, 2019 by admin

En route back from Joliet on Sunday, there was one more sight to see, just off I-355 in southeast suburban Lemont: The Danish Cemetery. It’s a small patch of land, sparsely populated by the dead — or at least their stones — and it hasn’t seen a burial in more than 50 years.
Danish Cemetery, Lemont

As far as I know, ghost stories aren’t told about this place, especially compared with boneyards that are more remote. The only story I know about the Danish Cemetery involves this memorial off to one edge of the grounds.

UNKNOWN SOLDIER
Served the U.S. in time of need
Found dead July 1, 1919
Buried by Legion Post 243

“The body of the unknown soldier was taken out of the Sag Canal at Sag Bridge on July 9 [sic], 1919,” Patch says. “He was found by bargemen working on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal… the funeral home believed the body had been in the water for about 10 days. The remains were brought to Lemont, and they tried to identify the body. Besides the uniform, there were no identifying papers on the body.

“The Lemont Historical Society said no one came forward in Lemont to identify the body and the Lemont American Legion buried him with full honors in the Danish Cemetery.”

The Old Joliet Prison, Interrupted

Posted on July 24, 2019 by admin

Though it’s interesting, we didn’t go to Joliet on Sunday just to see the Joliet Area Historical Museum. The drive’s a bit far for that. About a year ago, I read that the museum had started offering tours of the former Joliet Correctional Center, which closed in 2002. I knew I wanted to do that, and so Ann and I went.

These days the site is called the Old Joliet Prison — a much better name. As you look at the massive stone walls and guard towers and the barb-wire residuum, no weasel word like “correctional” will do. It was a prison.

The tour groups meet in front of the former prison’s administrative building. Convict labor built the prison in the 1850s, with a design by W.W. Boyington, who also designed the Chicago Water Tower.
It’s also the site of the 1915 murder of Odette Allen, wife of the prison’s warden, a story that the guide told us almost at once. Blunt force to her head, body set on fire in her room, a young black inmate fingered for the crime but not executed because there was too much doubt about his guilt, though he spent the rest of his life in the prison. Later I read about the incident, as relayed here.

One curious detail to the story (I thought): “That afternoon, [Warden Edmund] Allen bought his wife a $3,000 diamond ring. He was going to present it to her that evening at dinner.”

That’s an insanely expensive ring, about $76,000 in current money. Allen was independently wealthy? Maybe running a large state prison had its graft opportunities in the early 20th century. This is Illinois we’re talking about, after all. But enough to buy that kind of rock for his wife?

Anyway, the former administrative building hasn’t been stabilized yet, so we had to enter the grounds through one of the prison’s sally ports.
Almost immediately after our entrance, heavy rain started to fall. The tour leader took us into some of the few structures open to visitors, in hopes that the rain would slack off.

So we got to see some solitary confinement cells, with the only light from windows and cell phones.
Along with the former prison hospital and its abandoned equipment.
The prison has been closed for 17 years. In the early years of its abandonment, the place was pretty much no man’s land, prone to looting, arson and vandalism. Graffiti relics of those days are still visible.
The rain kept coming.

Soon thunder and lightning started. Since much of the tour is outdoors — most of the buildings are still unsafe — that meant the tour had to be cancelled. In a few moments of lighter rain, we all left the way we had come. I got a few pictures of the wet grounds as we exited.

We can re-schedule at no extra charge at a later time. I figure that might be October, when it certainly won’t be hot, and the risk of thunderstorms is a little less.

The Joliet Area Historical Museum

Posted on July 23, 2019 by admin

RIP, Debbie DeWolf. One Monday morning in 1988, when I was working at the Law Bulletin Publishing Co. in Chicago, the company receptionist — whose name I forget — reportedly called the company long distance from Kansas or Nebraska or the like and said she wasn’t coming to work that day. Or ever again.

Shortly thereafter, a young woman named Debbie DeWolf took her place. She was one of the more effervescent people I’d ever met and she ultimately make a career at the LBPC well beyond answering phones. I hadn’t spoken with her for many years before her death, but it was sad news.

On Sunday, Ann and I spent some time in Joliet. We noticed that the Blues Brothers pop up in odd places around town, such as on the wall of an auto parts business and at the main entrance to the Joliet Area Historical Museum.

That’s pretty remarkable traction for not only fictional characters, but for characters created more than 40 years ago. Then again, Jake’s nickname was “Joliet,” and he was seen being released from the Joliet Correctional Center when The Blue Brothers opened (and come to think of it, he was back in the jug at the end of the movie), so I guess Joliet can claim him.

Better than the city being associated forever with the prison. The museum doesn’t particularly downplay the long history of the prison, but it isn’t exactly celebrated either. In any case, it will probably be a few more decades before “prison” stops being the first answer in a word association game with “Joliet.”

It’s a longstanding tie. In 1972, Chicago songwriter Steve Goodman recorded a song called “The Lincoln Park Pirates,” about an aggressive Chicago-based towing service that regularly ransomed cars. It included the following lines:

All my drivers are friendly and courteous
Their good manners you always will get
‘Cause they all are recent graduates
Of the charm school in Joliet

The Joliet Area Historical Museum is a well-organized example of a mid-sized local history museum, with thematically grouped artifacts and reading material. In its main exhibition hall, the centerpiece re-creates a section of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, which passed through Joliet. The view from the first floor.
The view from the second floor, with stained glass from a demolished local church in the background.
Another transportation-related artifact: a Lincoln Highway signpost.
As it happens, the Lincoln Highway still runs through Joliet, half a block south of the museum, as U.S. 30. There’s also a sign in downtown Joliet marking the intersection of the Lincoln Highway and a branch of the former U.S. 66.

The museum does acknowledge the prison. In fact, there’s an entire gallery devoted to artwork made from material and debris and found objects from the former pen, or paintings inspired by it.

Even here, there’s no getting away from Jake Blues.
“Fight Girl,” “Caught” and “Jake” by Dante DiBartolo. Interestingly, the images are painted on metal shelving scavenged from the prison.

Part of the former prison burned in 2013 — arson — and some of the burned items were later used for art as well. Such as a scorched TV set for “Ren-ais-sance Man” by Terry M. Eastham.
I didn’t see a title for this one.
Remarkably, the work is by a 7th grader named Sophia Benedick. The words on the work are, “It’s Never Too Late to Mend.”

There is also a room in the museum devoted to John Houbolt. He was the NASA aerospace engineer who pushed successfully for lunar orbit rendezvous for Apollo, a concept that made the landing possible by 1969. I’d read about him before (and seen him depicted in the superb miniseries From the Earth to the Moon), but missed the detail that he went to high school in Joliet.

Besides the museum, we spent a short time in downtown Joliet. One of these days, I want to attend a show at the Rialto Square Theatre. Supposed to be pretty nice on the inside. The outside’s not too bad either.
On the grounds of the Joliet Public Library downtown is Louis Joliet himself.
Unlike Jebediah Springfield, he didn’t purportedly found the town or anything. Joliet just passed this way.

Woodstock Walkabout

Posted on July 22, 2019 by admin

At noon on Saturday, the sun was high and mighty and toasting northern Illinois well into the 90s F. Later in the afternoon, an unexpected storm blew through. Unexpected because I hadn’t looked at any weather reports. By late afternoon, the storm was over and temps were in the pleasant 70s.

A good time to take a short walk in Woodstock, Illinois, which might be one of the state’s most pleasant towns. A good place to start was Woodstock Square. At the very center of the square is a GAR memorial to Union soldiers and sailors from Woodstock, which was founded in 1852.
What’s a town square without a gazebo?
Strolling south from Woodstock Square, I passed by the Blue Lotus Buddhist Temple. I noticed it on a previous visit to Woodstock.

I don’t believe these statues were there the last time. It’s been seven or so years, after all. Plenty of time to add a few depictions of Buddha.
The temple isn’t the only religious site in the vicinity. Cater-cornered across the street is Woodstock’s First Church of Christ, Scientist. Not far away are the First United Methodist Church and the Unity Spiritual Center of Woodstock.

I’d come to Woodstock to see Greg Brown at the handsome Woodstock Opera House. He’s a vastly underappreciated singer-songwriter-story teller from Iowa.

It was dark after the show, but I didn’t want to hurry away from Woodstock. Besides, I’d read that there was a new(ish) mural just north of Woodstock Square. So it is, in an alley — which the town calls a “pedway” — off Main Street next to Classic Cinemas Woodstock Theatre.

The mural honors the likes of Groundhog Day, filmed locally and remembered elsewhere in town.

Orson Welles, who spent part of his youth in Woodstock.

The town also remembers Chester Gould, though the Dick Tracy Museum in Woodstock closed a number of years ago.
The alley features two statues as well. One is a wood carving of Woodstock Willie, presumably the town’s answer to Punxsutawney Phil, created by carver Michael Bihlmaier.
Oddly enough, also near the mural is a small bronze of Welles by a local artist, Bobby Joe Scribner.
According to the information sign near the work, it’s the only statue of Welles on public display in the United States. Interesting that it depicts an older Welles. His Paul Masson period, you might say.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Been There