Bean There

This photo, credit: ZAZ

(click on each photo to see the bigger picture)

We took a trip this summer. Went on holiday. Left the premises. We were on vacation. Took it on the road. Didn’t look back!

Guess where we went? Chicago. I had to go back to renew my non-accent and recall my dialect. And attend a conference, but I’m not talking about that right now. I’m talking about one of our favorite places to visit downtown. It’s a sculpture park, among other things, called Millennium Park.

See? It’s true!

It’s right downtown and across the street from the Chicago Art Institute.

This is one of the most interesting things I’ve ever seen, because of the many ways you can look at it, or see into it. You will understand in a moment. It is the Cloud Gate, commonly known as the Bean. I actually found us in this photo, in the reflection.

Cloud Gate is the creation of British artist Anish Kapoor. That’s not chrome, it’s made of highly polished stainless steel plates. Here is even more information.

If you check the link, you will see that this sculpture park has not escaped the corporate naming syndrome. I was really really hoping, but was disappointed. I won’t name the corporation. The city we live in is rampant with the syndrome. At least the public schools and the library system aren’t named after some wealthy businessperson. Yet.

You have to walk inside the Bean. It is absolutely incredible. Look at all the configurations of each person’s reflection:

There we are, at the bottom. Can you see the wild distortions? How many times do you see us reflected?

Here’s a wider view. This time I used a flash. It makes it easier to track us.

We were able to make a family portrait. Does this make me look too… ?

I don’t know where those little things came from, but they would run away and then spring back to our side. We usually have all our things with us, but the eldest was off on a different adventure for the summer.

You can’t see Millennium Park in the photo, but it is on the right. We’re going around the southwest corner of the park, turning north onto Michigan Avenue from Monroe.

I believe we only went one block north to Madison and turned west.

This is the Wabash Avenue elevated train platform, the “el”. We turned left, or south, and drove under it, on Wabash.

Our trip this summer was tempered by the time involved with the conference. It was probably good for us, in a way, as we usually try to do too many things on each expedition northward. Still and all, it was disappointing that we were not able to stop to see our good friends on the way up or back. But wait--that, in itself, gives us new opportunity--time to plan the next journey!

The good news is we took lots of photos, snaps, pics, close-ups, prints, portraits, mugs, landscapes, clicks, shots, images... and there is much more to tell.

(Check this space often!)