Pictures from Chicago: Cultural Center

Girl With Bicycle, 2008
This photograph was so sad. I am not sure who the photographer was, but it was part of the collection of pictures by the same artist in the Cultural Center. In the photograph, the children are so happy even when the world around them looks run down. It makes me grateful for what I have because they can be happy with something as simple as a scooter or bike.

This is a picture I took of one of the skylights in the building. The stained glass ceiling was so grand and made me feel like I had stepped into the past. It is amazing how someone could care about the integrity of art so much to preserve it throughout the years.

This is a closer detail of one of the skylights in the Cultural Center. I'm not sure if this was the same dome as the picture above it (but now that I look at the details, I'm pretty sure it was the bottom half of the dome), but the same goes for this picture in that I commend the people who preserve history. The stained glass reminds me of the details in the windows of the Titanic.

There was a metal gate hanging from the wall in one the Louis Sullivan exhibit, and it overlapped out onto the window. I decided to play with the focus of the shot to bring the foreground clearly into the picture while leaving the city background blurry.

Here is a second picture I snapped of the gate. This time, I tried to get the background into focus while leaving the detailed gate blurry. I don't like this picture quite as much as I like the one above it because I think the abstract qualities of the other picture make it more interesting. This picture points out the obvious that there is some sort of detail in front of a city, while the other one leaves the city as something to be interpreted after the whole of the picture is taken in by the viewer.

This is a detail from a chimney designed by Louis Sullivan. I loved the swirls and even though it is abstract, it reminds me of a horned owl. The top swirl could be the owl's face with two feathers sticking out from the head. The bottom swirl could be the owl's body.

This picture captures Jeff Zimmermann as he sets up an overhead to project an image on the wall. After this, he started outlining the diamond shapes with black paint. It was very interesting to see an artist at work because art is usually made in a studio away from public eyes.

The artist was installing his piece right there at the Cultural Center. I thought it was amazing to see how it is actually done by people who are respected in the art world. The paintings were of people, and left me wondering who these people were and why they were important to the artist.

This is one of those pieces where I was just like.. yes. I loved this piece and I chose to take a picture of it because just this piece told a bigger part of the story. It was in a hallway with papers and letters stapled to the wall. I was not sure of the point of the project, but it looked like the letters and notes were written by different people. Some of the papers were hand written, and some were typed. This particular paper stuck out because of the light behind it.