City of Art

 

The next morning we headed for Chicago, rolling into town at the tail end of rush hour exactly as we hoped. Our first stop was a late addition to the trip. An artist that I have known for nearly 20 years through blogging and later Facebook, had shared an exhibition of her work and several other Filipino/American artists at a community center that has started to be renovated after years of neglect. Since it was going to be going on during our time in Chicago, we stopped by for a gander and weren't disappointed.

The Cliffnote version of a long story is that the previous owners had run the organization into the ground and members had to sue them to retake control. They won that suit last fall and have been trying to rebuild the community center from the figurative ashes it had been reduced too. I name dropped the artist I know to the volunteer manning the front desk and as a result, we got a full tour of the entire building, much of it in only the beginning stages of remodeling.

I was able to see some of the paintings of the artist on display, something I have only seen through images shared on her social media sights. My wife and I also found a painting by another artist that just floored us with its beauty and though many of the artworks had prices listed, under this painting is said not for sell. I took a photo of that artists name and later while relaying our adventures to my artist friend, I mentioned that painting that wasn't for sale. She put us in touch with the artist who offered to sell it to us for what we felt was a very reasonable price. We agreed and if the deal goes through later this summer when the exhibit closes, I will do a post on it with a picture of it. But for now, in the name of intellectual property of both of the artists, I won't post any of the pictures I took of their works for now. 

Our original plan to see Chicago called for a stop at Millennium Park to walk around and see the sights and so we included that in this trip. One thing I hadn't thought about on the prior trip that got aborted, but thankfully considered on this trip was the fact that we would be arriving in a 15 passenger van. If you have ever been to Millennium Park, you will know that one has to park in underground garages underneath the park, ones with height restrictions that were lower than the height of our van. The only way around this is to find a place to park a couple miles away and walk. While this was doable 7 years ago, my mother-in-law and her sister were with us this and in no shape to walk that far and back.

Since I had been there before several times over the years, I made the call to just drive them to the edge of the park and drop them off and then drive about five miles further to a place where all the buses and RV's are told to park when visiting. I enjoyed a couple hours of silence among the buses and everyone else got a quick tour of the park to experience Cloudgate seen above and one of the fountains seen below. As a bonus, they brought back a Chick-fil-A sandwich for me to enjoy on the way out of town.

It was a long haul to our next destination and so I had hope to break off a large chunk of it that afternoon and did so. We stopped for the day in the suburbs of Toledo, Ohio.