Monday, February 18, 2008

Chi-town

(Friday, Dec 7th 2007)
One last work trip before I can break out of the city and relax with the family for the holidays. I catch a flight to the windy city ....








view from my suite at the Hard Rock (gotta love the corp. dime)








Our client Amstel Light has sponsored the last 3 First Friday events at the Museum of Contemporary Art. I oversee setting up the Amstel Lounge area and staff and then free to explore the art, complimentary bites and put my drink tickets to use ;-)




Some pics I was able to sneak of the art work. The staff is crazy strict at this musuem and eyes are always on you.



























I took a stroll in Millenium Park before heading back to my hotel. The view from my room had me intrigued ...







Cloud Gate


Cloud Gate is British artist Anish Kapoor's first public outdoor work installed in the United States. The 110-ton elliptical sculpture is forged of a seamless series of highly polished stainless steel plates, which reflect the city's famous skyline and the clouds above. A 12-foot-high arch provides a "gate" to the concave chamber beneath the sculpture, inviting visitors to touch its mirror-like surface and see their image reflected back from a variety of perspectives.

Inspired by liquid mercury, the sculpture is among the largest of its kind in the world, measuring 66-feet long by 33-feet high. Cloud Gate sits upon the At&T Plaza, which was made possible by a gift from AT&T.







This outdoor venue (Jay Pritzker) looked pretty sweet. As I approached it a couple approached me and asked me to take a picture of them. Apparently the guy had just proposed to his girl and she was definitely sprung.






The Ice Skating Rink with a view of the city behind it





the crown fountain




Designed by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa and inspired by the people of Chicago, The Crown Fountain is a major addition to the city's world-renowned public art collection.

The fountain consists of two 50-foot glass block towers at each end of a shallow reflecting pool. The towers project video images from a broad social spectrum of Chicago citizens, a reference to the traditional use of gargoyles in fountains, where faces of mythological beings were sculpted with open mouths to allow water, a symbol of life, to flow out. Plensa adapted this practice by having faces of Chicago citizens projected on LED screens and having water flow through a water outlet in the screen to give the illusion of water spouting from their mouths. The collection of faces, Plensa's tribute to Chicagoans, was taken from a cross-section of 1,000 residents.









I had to jump a plane early the next morning so I headed back to my hotel for dinner and called it a night.

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