The integration of art, artists, and “arts thinking” into the re-design of the Bloomingdale Line forms the core of The 606 Arts program and establishes a new model for public art and infrastructure reuse. The multi-dimensional Arts program converts an artifact of Chicago’s industrial heritage into a laboratory for new kinds of creative practices, linking art and life, nature and culture, and creating a new type of urban green-space. Begun as a neighborhood initiative, the project reflects a global mindset–that we must better utilize existing assets, and that we must use our collective imagination to adapt and transform what is already built. This imaginative task shall involve the participation of diverse community members, public and private agencies, and a wide array of “creatives” of all types. As an example of these new creative opportunities the transformation of the rail artifact into the nation’s longest elevated park has catalyzed the Chicago community at all levels, reflecting the grassroots vision that The 606 become a “Living Work of Art”.
As Lead Artist for The 606, it has been my privilege to serve as cultural interpreter of this grassroots vision. Fully “embedded” into the engineering and landscape design team, we have worked collaboratively to synthesize local site conditions with a broad range of contemporary art ideas to form a place-based, experiential approach. The concept that culture and sustainability are deeply linked underpins the arts strategies and creates the ethos of the Arts program, which manifests “place” at multiple scales: local, bioregional, global and virtual. This “arts thinking” has generated plans for several hybrid sites and landscape features across the length of The 606. These “embedded artworks” double as park amenities, performance venues or sites for public learning.
The 606 Arts program also calls for residencies, social practice, and participatory art forms to mix with material traditions such as mural painting to encourage interchange between communities of practice and genre cross-over. Provision is made for performative, spoken word, process-driven, rotating, and ephemeral works in all media, selected through open-call, curation, and partnerships with stakeholder organizations. A series of possibilities for invitational site commissions are woven into this verdant “art-scape.”
This multi-faceted plan for the integration of Arts for The 606 focuses on lively places and processes, which together manifest the dynamism, function and artfulness of the “Living Work of Art.”
606 Arts Integration Boards
The integration of art, artists, and “arts thinking” into the re-design of the Bloomingdale forms the core of The 606 Arts Program and establishes a new model for public art and infrastructure reuse. The multi-dimensional Arts Program converts an artifact of Chicago’s industrial heritage into a laboratory for new kinds of creative practices. View PDF.An east/west line of 453 temperature-sensitive, native, flowering trees form a climate-monitoring artwork, visualizing Chicago’s famous lake effect with a five-day bloom-spread. This civic experiment deploys a seasonal spectacle to engage citizens and scientists alike in understanding microclimate. View PDF.
This synthetic approach to ecological urbanism blends participatory art practices, climatology, and the expressive potential of public infrastructure to raise consciousness creating a new landscape typology, “pink infrastructure”. View PDFA mounded solar observatory revealing earthly and celestial events is created in collaboration with Adler Planetarium at the western trailhead at Ridgeway Avenue. Created from trail construction soils, the spiraling seasonal earthwork will re-ground audiences in their geographic and cultural reality. View PDF.
As a site driven by curiosity and discovery, the principle engagement strategy for Kimball Park is direct experience and unmediated, 5 senses learning. An ideal location to embrace new participatory art forms and STEM learning alike, the Kimball Park concept supports The 606 “interrogative” creative residencies concept. View PDF.Julia de Burgos Park focuses on the spoken word, poetry, and text based expressions. The connection between the cultural icon and her expressive medium is a reflection of the nearby community and reinforces the connection between “voice”, language, gender, identity, and cultural diversity, through poetry. View PDF.
An architectural communal seating area and sense of place, focused on the views of the historic boulevard below, marks the south end of the Logan Square Boulevards District at Humboldt Boulevard. The seating reflects the formal geometry of the historic site and these important, dramatic views. View PDF.Taking inspiration from the extreme vertically of stacked infrastructure, this layered site builds conceptually from bedrock geology upward. Several features exaggerate this verticality including: a repurposed commercial billboard, a “stretched” “tied arch” bridge and a “Spire Garden” of cultivars grown for their vertical form. View PDF.
The creative engineering initiative to re-locate a bridge another part of the trail not only literalizes the project theme of transformation but also takes the art concept of the readymade to new heights. This “artwork by engineers”, playfully links the industrial heritage of Chicago to the future-oriented Arts Program. View PDF.Primarily a facility for exhibition and performance, this open space is contextually flexible to respond to the dynamic forms of contemporary art as they evolve. The plaza will graciously receive monumental “plop” sculpture and will also host revolving shows, pop-ups and event based forms and performances. View PDF.
The Skate + Event Plaza is performance driven. Linking the cultural associations of artistic performance, the functional understanding of “performativity”, and the performing of everyday life, this “radically multifunctional” skate plaza aims to demonstrate that through imagination we can deliver more from the built environment. View PDF.The core idea of the landscape design for The 606 is the “urban wild”. Like the concept of “urban agriculture” and “urban forestry”, this idea reflects an approach linking aesthetics with ecological, botanical and horticultural function, revealing a reversal between urban, rural and wild landscape types and urbanization patterns. View PDF.
Begun in 1910, the massive industrial embankment reflects the Beaux-Arts aesthetic known as City Beautiful. More recently these walls have been used for a wide variety of painted images, street art, “graffiti”, and community mural projects. This uneasy status between image and object, plays out along the streetscape. View PDF.A suite of simple contemporary site furnishings has been designed for The 606 as a trailwide idiom. In addition to creating cohesion, this idiom is clearly contemporary, and not confused with heritage elements. Yet it relates to traditional park vernacular, subtly reinforcing that this is a familiar public park like all others. View PDF.
