The section of Chicago’s shoreline that abuts Morgan Shoal in Hyde Park is home to more than 1,100 rock carvings made over the last 90+ years by mostly anonymous creators. These include the city’s earliest dated carvings, back to 1930. This stretch of shore, from around Hyde Park Boulevard to 45th Street, is also the most deteriorated, with the old limestone revetments that once protected the parkland in a state of disrepair or, in some places, disappearance. But hundreds of carvings are still findable by the intrepid searcher, at least for now. The city has funded a major reconstruction of
Continue readingCategory: Vernacular Art
Mean Lean Disco
The Mean Lean Disco was on the main drag into blues-laden Clarksdale, Miss. There was so much to love about this building, photographed in 1994.
Continue readingMidwestern Roadside Treats
Here are some roadside treats from around the central midwest, photographed over the last dozen years. Be sure to click through the three pages of galleries to enjoy all the roadside goodness.
Continue readingThe Rainbow Beach Carvings
The revetment and jetty at the south end of Rainbow Beach and adjacent to the northeast corner of the Sawyer Water Plant host more than 700 rock carvings, many made by lifeguards in the 1950s and 60s. These carvings represent a rich record of summer life at the beach as well as including a number of significant individual works of art. It’s also the location with the largest number of identifiable carvers. These galleries feature highlights from the Rainbow Beach carvings. Read the Chicago Lakeshore Art Story
Continue readingThe Morgan Shoal And La Rabida Rock Carvings
Many of Chicago’s oldest lakefront carvings are on the badly deteriorated revetments along Morgan Shoal in Hyde Park. The more than 1,000 carvings there, between 45th and 50th Streets in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, are in imminent danger of being lost. This section of lakefront is in terrible condition, with many of the old rocks topsy turvy and falling into the lake. The condition of the revetments is such that they cannot be rehabilitated, but that does not mean the rocks and their carvings must be abandoned. The city is proceeding with a project to rebuild and expand the shoreline here,
Continue readingJack Barker’s Metal Art Fantasyland
I don’t love junk metal art. The idea of turning scrap into art is usually better than the results. But occasionally a maker brings enough imagination and creativity to the work that it transcends its lawn-ornament origins. Tom Every and his epic Forevertron in Wisconsin is one of the more famous examples of this. Jack Barker, whose metal art filled his Essex, Illinois, yard, did not work on Every’s monumental scale — physically or conceptually — but his creations were if anything weirder than Dr. Evermore’s. Barker’s use of materials could be disconcerting, as could his imagery. The ways he
Continue readingReview: Prisoners’ Inventions
Prisoners’ Inventions, written and illustrated by Angelo in collaboration with Temporary Services. Half Letter Press, Chicago, 200 pages, 2020. ISBN: 9781732051423. Paperback, $20 If you’re looking for conventional prison art, this book isn’t the place. No warrior princesses or hands holding bars here. But if you are interested in the incredible creativity that incarceration can generate, this book is a good place to start. In the first instance, there is the creativity of “Angelo,” the one-time California prison inmate who made the drawings featured here and who is responsible for most of the text. His sketches are both interesting and
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How To Make A Bottle Cap Figure
Unsealed: Bottle Cap Art | The Woolseys | The Patent Drawings | How To | The Race Question | The Blockbuster The Galleries: Masterworks | Troops | Signed | Flashers | Other Shapes | Mine | Bottle Cap Inn | Two Monuments Since co-curating a large-scale bottle-cap art exhibit in the 1990s I’ve been trying to find published instructions for how to make the little two-bowled figures that were once ubiquitous in thrift stores across the Midwest. It seemed there must be some kind of master blueprint somewhere to explain the existence of so many identical copies of these kitschy figures. Patent drawings exist for one kind of figure, but
Continue readingHyde Park Lakefront Stone Carvings Under Threat
Chicago’s lakefront is lined with thousands of stone carvings, created by mostly anonymous makers over the course of the 20th century. One of its most carving-rich areas is also its most endangered. Hundreds, probably thousands, of carvings have been lost over the last 20 years as the city, in cooperation with the Army Corps of Engineers, has reconstructed its shoreline to prevent erosion and flooding. This has meant removal of limestone blocks once used to armor the shore — and thus also the carvings made on many of those same blocks. Now the city is moving ahead with plans to
Continue readingMorgan Shoal Stone Carvings: Imminent Danger
The hundreds of stone carvings at Morgan Shoal, between 45th and 50th Street in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, are in imminent danger of being lost. This section of lakefront is in terrible condition, with the many of the old rocks topsy turvy and falling into the lake. The city is following up emergency measures to reduce flooding with an initiative to fund its framework plan for complete reconstruction. The plan has appealing elements, including creation of additional parkland. However, it makes no reference to the carvings or their preservation, which is no surprise considering that public awareness of this artwork
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