Eyeball chicago sculpture

The fabricators, F. T Corporation in Sparta, Wisconsin , have worked with you before. Forgive me, but did they even "bat an eye" at this commission? Don't worry about the puns, this artwork sucks them out of everyone, I do it myself As for the fabricators, they're fantastic, the best at what they do, which is mainly creating huge fiberglass figures for amusement parks, swimming pools, movies and things like that.

The first time I went there to create the twelve-foot Eye , I thought, "Wow, wait till they see this! I mean, they have giant bugs and dinosaurs and ice-cream cones standing around, so a thirty-foot eyeball?

No big deal. By October this will get old. But could you have named the piece simply I? It is, after all, a self-portrait Sure, but as a self-portrait, it's not very revealing, although it's definitely important that my eye is the model.

An eye is like an individual fingerprint, and so much of my work is at that weird intersection of what's very personal, and also populist and entertaining. Even if I'm not happy about all of them. Are you ever worried about pieces being read as one-liners and not penetrate any deeper? Does it matter? My work does operate on a very quick level, and for some people it ends there. But I hope that for at least some viewers the work will have more complex meanings.

Many of my favorite artists - Duchamp and Warhol, for instance - could be accused of producing one-liners, but obviously their work is also extremely complex. They all created readable, sometimes ironic, and often funny imagery too. But I'm also a ham, and I want to draw in an audience, so I'm constantly balancing between being likable and being off-putting. That was a pretty arrogant thing to say, wasn't it? What I meant was that so much public art fails to connect with the audience, and I've wondered if it's possible to make what I think is good art, but which speaks to a larger group than the "insider" art-world I've been used to communicating with.

I first tried this with Cherry Tree : it was beautiful and highly crafted but also spoke to a broad audience. And Eye is certainly connecting with people, creating a lively dialogue even before it's installed.

I don't think everyone is going to love it, it'll be creepier and weirder and not as overtly beautiful as Magnolias for Pittsburgh but it will make an impression. Meanwhile, there's a show of your work at Kavi Gupta Gallery until July 17th , a bunch of pieces on view through September at the Museum of Contemporary Art , another at the Art Institute.

With all these other sculptures around Chicago, it feels a little like the Summer of Tasset. News U. Politics Joe Biden Congress Extremism.

Special Projects Highline. HuffPost Personal Video Horoscopes. Follow Us. Terms Privacy Policy. I joke that I'd like to create one a hundred feet high. Maybe for Dubai? Not too long ago you stated that "most public art is crap.

It's great. And it's all downhill after this. This is as good as it gets. The installation is funded by the Chicago Loop Alliance, a group of businesses that brings events and pop-up artwork to the area. Events Innovation Festival. Follow us:. By Rachel Z. Arndt 1 minute Read. Open your eyes, Chicago, and meet the gaze of a foot eyeball. Design Co. Design Sucking CO2 from the sky could help save the planet. But it faces a vexing design problem Co.

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