Current Temporary Artworks

These pieces were selected through an invitational process guided by a partnership between The Trust for Public Land, the Chicago Park District and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. Artworks are listed in alphabetical order by art piece title.  

Birds Watching
Artist: Jenny Kendler
Location: Between Kimball Ave and St. Louis St on Bloomingdale Trail

Birds Watching is a 40-foot long sculpture composed of a “flock” of one hundred reflective bird’s eyes mounted on aluminum, created for Storm King’s exhibition Indicators: Artists on Climate Change. The luminous eyes wrap a hill of native grasses in a ten-foot-high band of color, “gazing back” when illuminated. Each eye belongs to a species of bird considered threatened or endangered by climate change in the United States—creating a potent portrait of what we stand to lose.

Within the gaze of these many others, the work asks us to consider our own responsibility for climate change’s myriad effects on other beings. Have we allowed birds and other nonhumans—with their unique and wondrous lifeways—to become the sacrifice zones of extraction capitalism? As Surrealist André Breton suggested, in order to change ways of being, we must first change ways of seeing.

For more on the piece and the artist visit: https://jennykendler.com/section/466865-Birds-Watching.html

Children Are Our Future
Artists: John Weber and Catherine Cajandig
Location: California Ave and Bloomingdale Ave (under the Bloomingdale Trail)
Organizations: Chicago Public Art Group and Youth Service Project

Originally installed in 1979 by the artists in collaboration with Youth Service Project as part of The United Nation’s “Year of the Child,” the current project brings the original partners together to reimagine that work. The original work at Bloomingdale and California gained historic importance as the first post-modern mural in the Midwest, substituting text for images, using bilingual texts and using mixed materials symbolically.  Cement relief portions never vandalized in any way, over 35 years demonstrates the effective communication of non-figurative elements.

The “renewed” mural will tell current residents that they are part of an on-going neighborhood history and serve as a message from one generation to another.

Graffiti Garden
Artist: Multiple
Location: Bloomingdale Ave, between Kimball Ave and Central Park Ave (south facing walls)
Organization: Kuumba Lynx

A collective of artists representing a multi-generational cross-section of crews painting in Chicago, have organized a series of permission walls that will include crews that have been painting along Bloomingdale Avenue since the 1980’s as well as international and emerging artists. These crews originally formed as an alternative to street violence and many work to promote strong communities.

Turning Sky
Artist: Luftwerk
Location: Milwaukee Ave Bridge on the Bloomingdale Trail

Inspired by the Living Work of Art that is The 606, “Turning Sky” is an ephemeral lighting station that visualizes local weather and atmospheric conditions on the trail. Patterns of clouds varying in speed coincide with wind data, velocity, and direction, and the ever-changing colors represent temperature. 

New Monuments for New Cities 
Artist: Various
Location: Damen Arts Plaza, Humboldt Overlook and along the Bloomingdale Trail

New Monuments for New Cities is the inaugural project of the High Line Network Joint Art Initiative, a new collaboration between infrastructure reuse projects in North America. This public art exhibition will travel across the United States and Canada throughout 2019. For the exhibition, five urban reuse projects that are part of the High Line Network invited five of their local artists or artist groups to create proposals (in the form of posters) for new monuments. Each participating location will produce an exhibition of the resulting 25 artworks specific to their site. For more information visit our page: https://www.the606.org/new-monuments/