Oct

Travel Tip: See Chicago in Close-Up

by Joyce McGreevy on October 14, 2019

Chicago at night features surprising little details of America’s best big city, prompting the travel tip “slow down and focus.” (Image © by Jennifer Kleiman)

Chicago’s sweeping views are mosaics of historical detail.
© Jennifer Kleiman

A Big City’s Surprising Little Details

Poet Carl Sandburg called Chicago “The City of the Big Shoulders.” America’s third biggest city is known for big sights—as a few little details will show:

First skyscrapers? Sorry, New York. They started right here in the 1880s, soaring from 10 to 110 stories in nine decades.
That body of water to the east? It’s massive Lake Michigan, more of an inland sea.
A “world-dazzling” wheel that rivaled the Eiffel Tower? George Ferris engineered it for the 1893 World’s Fair. We know it as the Ferris Wheel. Today’s version at Navy Pier is a Chicago icon.

Face it, Chicago knows BIG. (Crown Fountain Millennium Park)
© Joyce McGreevy

Best Big City

This month, for the third year in a row Conde Nast crowned Chicago “America’s Best Big City.” Typically, travelers are in a big, big hurry to see it all. From Millennium Park to Willis Tower to the Architectural Boat Tour, Chicago’s big attractions draw big crowds.

But too big a rush makes for one big blur. So as a former local, here’s my travel tip: Slow down and focus on Chicago’s surprising little details.

Consider the Loop, for example, the heart of Chicago’s downtown. Only 1.5 square miles, it’s a world of magnificent architecture, parks, and public art. Seen close-up, it’s a detail lover’s dream, a mosaic of urban history. Here’s a sampler of Chicago’s best reasons to dwell on details.

Holy Cow, It’s Past-Your-Eyes!

Among the most photographed sights in Chicago is a cow.

The bronze cow sculpture at the Chicago Cultural Center tops travel tip lists in Chicago, America’s third biggest city. (Image © by Neil Tobin)

You may take the bull by the horns, but there’s good reason to look this cow in the eyes.
© Neil Tobin

This big bronze bovine stands right outside the Chicago Cultural Center. You can’t miss it.

A family pose with the bronze cow sculpture at the Chicago Cultural Center, a popular attraction in the Conde Nast “Best Big City.” (Image © by Joyce McGreevy)

Visitors hoof it to see Chicago’s bronze cow.
© Joyce McGreevy

Ah, but there’s something most visitors do miss. Eager to get their photo and moo-ve on, they typically overlook two little details:

A surprising little detail, Chicago’s Water Tower, in the eye of the bronze cow sculpture at the Chicago Cultural Center evokes the travel tip “slow down and focus.” (Image © by Neil Tobin)

Etched in one eye is an image of the Chicago Water Tower.
© Neil Tobin

An etching of a Picasso artwork in the eye of a cow sculpture evokes the travel tip “slow down and focus” on surprising little details in Chicago, (Image © Neil Tobin)

In the other is an image of an untitled sculpture by Picasso.
© Neil Tobin

Oh, I see: The tiniest detail can be a rich repository of history.

Built in 1869, the Water Tower is one of the only buildings that survived the Chicago Fire of 1871. (The notion that Mrs. O’Leary’s cow started the fire, however, is bull.)

Chicago’s Water Tower is linked to a surprising little detail in a sculpture outside Chicago’s Cultural Center that in turn inspired the travel tip “slow down and focus.” (Public domain image Afries52 [CC BY 3.0]

Here’s how to house a humble standpipe, Chicago-style.
© Afries52 [CC BY 3.0]

As for the Picasso, some people had a cow when it arrived in 1967. Chicagoan Gwendolyn Brooks, the first black author to win the Pulitzer Prize, anticipated the mixed response in a poem she delivered at the unveiling:

Does man love Art? Man visits Art, but squirms.
Art hurts. Art urges voyages—
and it is easier to stay at home,
the nice beer ready. . . .

People looking at a painting at the Art Institute of Chicago exemplify the travel tip “slow down and focus.” (Image © by Joyce McGreevy)

At the Art Institute of Chicago, visitors are a study in the art of focus.
© Joyce McGreevy

Reading Between the Lions

Housing 300,000 of the world’s greatest artworks, the Art Institute of Chicago is clearly a place to slow down and focus. Those who do will notice fascinating little details even before they step inside.

For instance, two lions have guarded the entrance since 1894. Visitors choosing a lion to photograph often comment that they’re identical.

Only they’re not.

Sculptor Edward Kemeys loved animals and was famous for sketching them in the wild. Would such an artist turn lions into copycats?

One lion growls and prowls. The other, Kemeys noted, “stands in an attitude of defiance.”
© Joyce McGreevy

Ever Wonder “Y”?

Like animals in camouflage, some intriguing Chicago details hide in plain sight. Curiously, the most prolific detail may be the least noted—though many visitors unknowingly photograph it.

The Chicago Theater sign features a surprising little detail, prompting the travel tip “slow down and focus” in America’s Best Big City. (Image © by Joyce McGreevy)

“Hidden” in this popular landmark is another Chicago icon.
© Joyce McGreevy

Can you see it?

Zoom in.

It’s the Y shape behind CHICAGO.

Why the Y? It represents the three branches of the Chicago River, which splits north and south at Wolf Point.

Once you notice this symbol of civic pride, you start seeing it everywhere—on buildings, bridges, and even staircases:

The Chicago Cultural Center interior features surprising little details, prompting the travel tip “slow down and focus” in this Conde Nast Best Big City. (Image © by Joyce McGreevy)

Spot the Y symbol in mosaic above the Y-shaped staircase in Chicago’s Cultural Center.
© Joyce McGreevy

Eyes Up

It’s funny how pixels on a few square inches of phone screen can commandeer our attention. Meanwhile, 1.6 million of Chicago’s most spectacular details often go unnoticed—even by locals, reportedly.

What—where?

Start at the former Marshall Field & Company, now part of a national retail chain. Built in 1873, it was once the world’s biggest department store. Today, its five elegant stories still dominate State Street.

Enter at street level and walk through a warren of cosmetic counters until you reach the center.

Now look up.

The mosaic ceiling by Louis Comfort Tiffany at the former Marshall Field, Chicago (now Macy’s) inspires the travel tip “slow down and focus” in America’s Best Big City. (Image © by Joyce McGreevy)

Feast your eyes on the largest ceiling ever built with favrile glass.
© Joyce McGreevy

Little details of a mosaic by Louis Comfort Tiffany at the former Marshall Field, Chicago (now Macy’s) dazzles visitors who heed the travel tip “slow down and focus”. (Image © by Joyce McGreevy)

The iridescent glass was created by Louis Comfort Tiffany, who patented the process.
© Joyce McGreevy

Tiffany’s mosaics enchanted early 20th-century Chicago. Today you can follow the “Tiffany Trail” to 14 venues.

An Urban Mosaic

“In the Big City, large and sudden things happen,” wrote that master of surprise, O. Henry. True, but seen close-up, a big city’s little details can suddenly enlarge your sense of place.

That’s why my travel tip for Chicago is slow down and focus. Some of the city’s biggest surprises are found in the smallest details.

Shadows cast by ornamental ironwork links small details to the history of America’s third biggest city at the Chicago Cultural Center. (Image © by Neil Tobin)

Details of Chicago’s Cultural Center evoke the landmark’s rich history.
© Neil Tobin

Thanks to Jennifer Kleiman and Neil Tobin for their stunning images of Chicago.

Comment on the post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

Joyce McGreevy Comments

On Foot/The World's Art & Design/USA

Jun

The Wondrous World of Steampunk New Zealand

by Joyce McGreevy on June 17, 2019

Parade goers cheer the arrival of Queen Victoria (Pinky Agnew) at Steampunk Festival NZ, which reflects the Victorian cultural heritage and creative thinking of Oamaru, New Zealand. (Image © Liz Cadogan)

As an airship hovers nearby, Queen Victoria rolls into town for Steampunk Festival NZ.
© Liz Cadogan/@LizCadogan

Victorian Cultural Heritage
Meets Kiwi Creativity

Queen Victoria was there, celebrating her 200th birthday. Festivities included a parade, teapot races, parasol duels, and a wedding. The bride wore purple, the groom a metal samurai hat.

What is this?

Oh, I see: This is Oamaru (pop. 13,000), where Victorian cultural heritage and Steampunk creative thinking are a marriage made in heaven—a.k.a. New Zealand.

Parasol duelists and crowds enjoy Steampunk Festival NZ, which celebrates the Victorian cultural heritage and creative thinking of Oamaru, New Zealand. (Image © Janet Doyle)

Like “Rock Paper Scissors,” parasol duels involve three moves: Plant, Twirl, Snub.
© Janet Doyle

What is Steampunk?

By definition, it’s a sub-genre of science fantasy set in an alternative Victorian era. By practice, it’s an art inspired by 19th-century steam-powered machinery. By Jove, it’s jolly good fun!

A steampunk spaceman, bagpiper, and crowds enjoy Steampunk Festival NZ, which celebrates the Victorian cultural heritage and creative thinking of Oamaru, New Zealand. (Image © Liz Cadogan)

No Steampunk Victorian deep-sea diver ever forgets his top hat.
© Liz Cadogan/@LizCadogan

In Oamaru, the Victorian setting is real. Built on gold rushes and grain booms, Oamaru was once New Zealand’s 9th biggest city, burgeoning at the same pace as San Francisco.

Then the boom went bust.

The limestone architecture of Oamaru, New Zealand site of Steampunk Festival NZ, reflects its Victorian cultural heritage. (Image © Brenda Mueli / OamaruCaptured)

With its Victorian limestone architecture, Oamaru is a popular location for filmmakers.
©Brenda Mueli @OamaruCaptured

But a national treasure was hiding in plain sight—New Zealand’s most intact Victorian architectural landscape. With 70 heritage buildings on the historical register, Oamaru proved the ideal Steampunk Capital of the Southern Hemisphere.

A couple in “full steam” costumes reflect the Victorian cultural heritage and creative thinking of Steampunk Festival NZ in Oamaru, New Zealand. (Image © Malcolm and Annette. Whyte / M&A Whyte Photography )

In the steampunk retro-future, whimsical fashion is all the rage.
© Malcolm & Annette Whyte / M&A Whyte Photography

Imagining Yesterday’s Tomorrow Today

“Steampunk is as rich as your imagination can possibly make it,” says Helen Jansen, a.k.a. sky pirate La Falconesse. She and Iain “Agent Darling” Clark organize Steampunk Festival NZ for visitors from around the world.

ain Clark (“Agent Darling”) and Helen Elizabeth Jansen (“La Falconesse”) launched Steampunk Festival NZ, which celebrates Victorian cultural heritage and creative thinking in Oamaru, New Zealand. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Clark and Jansen have been widely praised for making NZ steampunk welcoming to all.
© Joyce McGreevy

They attribute steampunk’s appeal to its inclusiveness and creativity. “It lends itself to the creation of a personality as an extension of yourself in that alternative time,” says Clark. “You’re not being somebody else, as in LARPing [live action role play], where you’re playing the part of, say, Captain America.”

“In steampunk you get the opportunity to become the person you imagine yourself to be, and that may be an airship captain, an inventor, or a secret agent who travels through time.”

A man in glowing beard and costume reflects the Victorian cultural heritage and creative thinking of Steampunk Festival NZ in Oamaru, New Zealand. (Image © Malcolm and Annette. Whyte / M&A Whyte Photography )

Steampunk’s popping of personality lets us be more than we appear to be in our everyday lives.
© Malcolm & Annette Whyte / M&A Whyte Photography

Delight in Discovery

Says Jansen, “We’ve seen people develop their confidence and create the most incredible devices and outfits. Some people who were very shy are now going on stage. They’ve found the wonder.”

A girl in steampunk costume reflects the Victorian cultural heritage and creative thinking of Steampunk Festival NZ in Oamaru, New Zealand. (Image © Annette and Malcolm Whyte/ M&A Whyte Photography )

“Every year as people come to Oamaru you see that delight in an inner discovery,” says Jansen.
© Malcolm & Annette Whyte / M&A Whyte Photography

She and Clark delight that fellow Kiwis are discovering Oamaru, located in the Waitaki District of New Zealand’s South Island.

“I was in tourism and came here because of the penguin colony,” says Jansen. “Oamaru was known in the international tourism market as a place to see penguins, but people I met in other parts of New Zealand would look at me quizzically and say, ‘Where?’”

Steampunk Festival NZ changed that. Today, wherever Clark and Jansen travel, people ask, “Oh, are you from Oamaru?” It’s become a point of pride.

Iain Clark and Helen Elizabeth Jansen, organizers of Steampunk Festival NZ, pose in “full steam” to celebrate the Victorian cultural heritage and steampunk creative thinking of Oamaru, New Zealand. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

“We always travel in ‘full steam,’ ” says Jansen of their garb. “It’s too heavy to pack.”
© Joyce McGreevy

All for Love and Fun

When Clark and Jansen launched the steampunk movement in Oamaru, he was a captain in another movement, ALF’s Army.

“All for Love and Fun,” explains Clark. ALF’s Army was founded by a university lecturer in the 1960s when tensions over the Vietnam War were a regular feature of campus life.

“The idea was to get rid of aggression in a peaceful way.”

Groups formed regiments of pacifist armies and did battle, using paper swords, flower bombs, and cold porridge.

“The nurses would revive everybody with whiskey and jellybeans,” says Jansen.

The rules of tea dueling are elaborate. One should “dunk as if one’s life depended upon it.”
© Tourism Waitaki

Today ALF’s Army is New Zealand’s “largest pacifist warfare organization” with regiments in several towns and cities. Another delightful fact: In 1990, ALF’s founder was appointed The Wizard of New Zealand by Prime Minister Mike Moore. Yes, officially.

Wizardry Was Just the Beginning

One evening as Clark, a renowned jeweler, celebrated with his Oamaru regiment, he brought along a beer mug embellished with fanciful gadgets. This inspired the formation of the League of Victorian Imagineers, which led to an exhibition—which drew thousands of visitors to Oamaru’s Victorian Heritage Celebration.

Two steampunk mugs created by Iain Clark, manufacturing jeweler and organizer of Steampunk Festival NZ, which celebrates the Victorian cultural heritage and steampunk creative thinking of Oamaru, New Zealand. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

A steampunk gadget must look as if it works, says Clark. “Oh, it’s got a wee boiler
and high-voltage electricity. What could possibly go wrong?”
© Joyce McGreevy

Soon all these different parts—steampunk, Victorian heritage, history, fantasy, love and fun, creative thinking, local neighborliness, and worldwide interest—clicked together, like one exquisitely embellished gadget of possibility.

Craft is key. As a music video explains, you can’t just glue on gears and call it steampunk.
© Tourism Waitaki

The Steampunk Festival NZ steamed gloriously forth, a gathering of be-gowned, be-goggled, and be-jeweled ladies and gents amid a gleaming array of gizmos, gauges, and gears.

A group of costumed steampunkers enjoy Steampunk Festival NZ, which celebrates the Victorian cultural heritage and creative thinking of Oamaru, New Zealand. (Image © Janet Doyle)

“Everybody who comes is also contributing to creating the festival,” says Jansen.
© Janet Doyle

Ten years on, Steampunk Festival NZ is the crown jewel of a town that’s increasingly rich in tourism treasure.

Better still, the Festival’s richness is not about making money, but all for love and fun. One more reason to visit Oamaru, NZ, where Victorian cultural heritage and Steampunk creative thinking fit together, hand in gadget-embellished glove.

A steampunk glove belongs to La Falconesse (a.k.a. Helen Jansen, organizer of Steampunk Festival NZ, which celebrates the Victorian cultural heritage and creative thinking of Oamaru, New Zealand. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Does this glove let La Falconesse teleport between places and times? One imagines so!
© Joyce McGreevy

Follow Steampunk NZ here. Plan Oamaru/Waitaki travels here.

Comment on the post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

Joyce McGreevy Comments

Cultural Heritage & Traditions/New Zealand/The World's Art & Design

Apr

“Where Are the Women?”

by Joyce McGreevy on April 16, 2019

Shadow of a woman on stairs in a restorer's studio in Florence where Jane Adams of Advancing Women Artists is working to restore the hidden half of Italy's artistic heritage. (Image © by Joyce McGreevy)

The Hidden Half of Florence, Italy’s Artistic Heritage

“First came the flood,” says Jane Adams. “Then came the flood of helpers.” A passionate builder of partnerships for Advancing Women Artists, Adams meets me at a café near the River Arno. The setting is picture-perfect: Florence, a 2,000-year-old city and the center of Italy’s artistic heritage.

In Florence, reflections of buildings in the Arno river that flooded in 1966 and threatened Italy's artistic heritage. (Image © by Joyce McGreevy)

But on November 4, 1966, the Arno surged over its banks with brutal ugliness, tearing the city in two. It killed 101 people, and inundated historic buildings to a depth of 22 feet.

By the time the water receded, it had deposited 600,000 tons of mud—one ton for everyone in the city. Slicked with motor oil, it swallowed up 14,000 treasures of Renaissance art.

In Florence, a flooded piazza in 1966 is a reminder of threats to Italy's artistic heritage. [image in the public domain]

A café in Florence, Italy, after the flood of 1966.

The Mud Angels

Almost immediately, volunteers showed up by the hundreds. In that pre-digital era, gli angeli del fango—“mud angels”—converged on Florence from across Europe with astonishing speed. According to historian Richard Ivan Jobs, “even before soldiers arrived as part of the official government response, ‘the city was already in the hands of the young’.”

The painstaking work of restoring art began.

But the flood was not the only threat to Italy’s art, says Adams. Artworks by women had long been buried by neglect. For centuries, the hidden half of Florence’s artistic heritage was relegated to basements or incorrectly attributed to men.

Who would undo that damage?

Jane Fortune of Advancing Women Artists inspired worldwide support for the restoration of forgotten works by female Renaissance artists who are part of Italy's artistic heritage. (image by Advancing Women Artists Archives)

Jane Fortune’s book inspired the Emmy-winning documentary
Invisible Women: Forgotten Artists of Florence.
Photo courtesy of Advancing Women Artists

Florence’s Good Fortune

In 1967, a college student in Florence named Jane Fortune was heading home to her native Indiana. As Adams tells it, Fortune said to herself, I don’t know when, I don’t know how, but I will find a way to give something back to this city.

In 2005 she got her chance.

Returning to Florence as an art columnist, Fortune explored museums and was soon moved to wonder: Where are the women? Highly visible as subjects, they were rarely seen as artists.

The San Marco convent and museum in Florence that evokes the forgotten artists of the Italian Renaissance who are part of Italy's artistic heritage. [image in the public domain]

Something was hidden away in a corner of San Marco, Florence.

Then Fortune read about Plautilla Nelli.

The first-known female Renaissance painter, Nelli had been wildly successful, an achievement made more remarkable by the fact that as a woman she could not study anatomy or join a guild. Nor was she a lady of leisure. The prioress of a convent, she taught classes, managed budgets, and met daily demands.

Yet Nelli became one of the few women included in Europe’s first major art-history book, Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1568).

As Vasari observed, “There were so many of [Nelli’s] paintings in the houses of gentlemen in Florence it would be tedious to mention them all.”

The masterpiece Lamentation with Saints by Plautilla Nelli shows why Advancing Women Artists is working in Florence to restore the hidden half of Italy's artistic heritage. [public domain image]

Praised for its raw grief, Nelli’s Lamentation with Saints almost vanished forever.

Searching for Nelli

Intrigued, Fortune sought Nelli’s work, but only three paintings remained. When she tracked down one of them, it was a dark canvas streaked in dirt and infested with woodworm.

Fortune decided then and there to commit herself to the restoration of Nelli’s work.

Rosella Lari and Jane Adams view Plautilla Nelli's The Last Supper, an important work in Italy's artistic heritage that Advancing Women Artists is working to restore. (Image © by Joyce McGreevy)

In the process, Fortune inspired a movement. As more people supported the effort, the number of artistic search-and-rescue missions grew. In 2009, Fortune founded the Advancing Women Artists Foundation.

“Our aim is to create a connection between art lovers of the present and women artists of the past for everyone’s future,” says Adams.

It’s a mission that she and AWA director Linda Falcone have inherited from Fortune. “Indiana Jane,” as she was affectionately nicknamed by the Italian press, died of ovarian cancer in September 2018.

A Citizen of Florence

“What she did, she did in partnership,” says Adams. “It was for the sheer good of giving back something to Florence, bringing back to the forefront the hidden half of the Florentine Renaissance heritage.”

Rosella Lari stands before Plautilla Nelli's The Last Supper, which she is restoring as part of Advancing Women Artists' efforts to illuminate the hidden half of Italy's artistic heritage. (Image © by Joyce McGreevy)

The Art of Making Art Visible

Now Adams and Falcone are carrying that partnership forward, inviting us to practice the art of making women’s art visible.

Before-and-after details from Plautilla Nelli's The Last Supper reflect the painstaking efforts by Advancing Women Artists in Florence to restore the hidden half of Italy's artistic heritage. (Left: Image by Francesco Cacchiani for Advancing Women Artists; Right: Image © by Joyce McGreevy)

“Restoration is not re-creation,” says Adams of the painstaking process of
revealing original work.
L: Francesco Cacchiani for AWA / R: © Joyce McGreevy

AWA has restored 61 paintings and sculptures, published a dozen ground-breaking books, and identified 2,000 forgotten artworks. The foundation is building the world’s largest digital database of 15th- to 19th-century women artists.

Meanwhile, a painting once covered in dirt and infested with woodworm is nearing the final stages of restoration. When it goes on view in the Santa Maria Novella Museum, it will be the first time in 450 years that it has been publicly displayed.

Oh, I see: The hidden half of Florence, Italy’s artistic heritage is steadily coming to light.

Jane Adams, partnership relations director of Advancing Women Artists, is working in Florence to restore the hidden half of Italy's artistic heritage. (Image © by Joyce McGreevy)

Adams (above), Falcone, and donors from 19 countries are giving new visibility
to historic women artists.
© Joyce McGreevy

Join the worldwide effort to save women’s artwork here. Follow AWA here.

Explore Nelli’s Last Supper, the world’s largest painting by a female Renaissance artist here.

Comment on the post below.

Joyce McGreevy Comments

Cultural Heritage & Traditions/Italy/The World's Art & Design

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Travel Tip: See Chicago in Close-Up