Winged skull Frank, carved into a slab at Morgan Shoal’s Pebble Beach, is the most accomplished rock carving that survives on Chicago’s lakefront, along with Roman Villareal’s mermaid near Oakwood Beach.
Clearly a fairly recent creation, I had heard rumors that its carver was still around. Now I’ve finally met him — appropriately enough at one of the city’s community meetings to discuss the future of the Morgan Shoal waterfront.
The artist is Luke Muzyka, a lifelong South Sider. Muzyka studied art at the School of The Art Institute and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign before receiving his degree from UIC in Chicago. He had done some sculpting as part of his art training, he says, but his career went in a different direction. He is a paramedic and recently earned a masters of social work degree.
“Frank” is a tribute to a close friend who died in a car accident in 2010, one of two memorials Muzyka carved at Morgan Shoal. The other is simpler but still striking, just the name Frank and his years (1979-2010).
Of the skull, Muzyka says, “It’s like a 17th century style of headstone. I think it’s a style that he appreciated.”
He made the carvings between 2010 and 2012, he says, using tools left over from his artist days.
“It seemed like a great way to spend time out at the lake, and I did want to memorialize Frank. I saw him every day. We were like brothers. He was like my best friend at the time.”
Frank was a frequent lake swimmer, and they spent hours together along the shore, including at Morgan Shoal.
“It’s a space that feels secluded and that feels historic. Because of the ruins of the different rocks it has this unique appearance. You kind of feel that that area is kind of peaceful and historic. Some people use the word healing.
“It’s kind of an out of the way space. You’ve got to work to get there. People that end up over there are people that are intentionally going there.”
Muzyka says he had noticed and appreciated the other carvings along the lake, including the hundreds of names and initials carved around Pebble Beach.
“I was really appreciating all the historic initials. I thought, ‘I got tools. I should do something for Frank.’”
He doesn’t recall exactly how long it took to make the carving, but says he worked on it for a couple hours at a time over three or four days.
The rock he chose for Frank is not one of the limestone blocks that were used in the old sea wall but rather one the whiter, much thinner slabs that can be found around Pebble Beach.
“I picked that stone because I liked the location of it and it was appropriately sized. It was a more difficult stone to work on. The surface of that stone was more rustic, not very flat. The stone itself gave me some trouble.”
Indeed, he says, “I never got it to the point of completion that I really wanted to.”
“Frank,” under a rock
The bigger issue now is that a nearby rock has collapsed on top of “Frank,” covering half the carving. That’s of a piece with the general state of ruin at Morgan Shoal, where decades of storms and pounding waves have torn up most of the nearly century-old lakefront protections and caused flooding on the nearby Lake Shore Drive. Those ruins represent atmosphere for the folks who remain devoted to this out-of-the-way shoreline, but for the authorities they are part of a problem to be solved.
The city’s plans for reconstructing the Morgan Shoal lakefront officially recognize the presence of the rock carvings and commit to preserving at least some of them. Overall, everything along the shore between 45th and 51st Street is going to be torn out and rebuilt over the next several years, with lake fill adding some parkland.
“I understand the need. [But] I see all that lakeshore as being an archeological site too. I wish some consideration could be given to that. Keeping that sense that this is a historic beachfront…. There is a lot of salvaging that could be done there that could really cement the history of it.”
The immediate question is whether the winged skull will be among the carvings salvaged, carefully extracted from its current entombment and given a lasting home. As Muzyka says, “It’s a matter of how much effort they’re going to put into preserving. Who knows who’s prioritizing things on the ground.”
Through the efforts of his friend Luke, Frank has joined the hundreds of others whose identity is inscribed in a place they loved — part of a shoreline that is the city’s most treasured asset. This rich history contributes mightily to Morgan Shoal’s special presence, and it deserves to be fully honored in the city’s project plans. The carving “Frank” is itself a lakefront masterpiece, one of the few whose creator is known and whose story can be fully told. A high priority indeed.
- Read about the Morgan Shoal project at the Hyde Park Herald and Block Club Chicago.
- Read more about the Chicago lakefront rock carvings.
- Find locator maps for “Frank” and the other carvings at Morgan Shoal, and for all along the lakefront.