Public Art in Joliet

Today's Chicago Tribune Magazine ran a short piece on the "identity columns" which grace the landscape of Joliet, my adopted hometown.

Urban mosaic
Authorship: Jeff Lyon
Published February 25, 2007

FOLKS IN JOLIET talk about "pillars of the community," they may be speaking literally. That's because in recent years the fast-growing city of 145,000 southwest of Chicago has commissioned almost 40 "identity columns"-original sculptures mounted on pedestals, many of mosaic tile.

It's a joint effort of Joliet and a local group, Friends of Community Public Art. FCPA's president, sculptor Kathleen Farrell, conceived the project. "To me," she says, "the idea that a specific type of art object could appear repeatedly throughout the city and become recognizable as a Joliet icon was very exciting."

The plan called for local artists to produce the sculptures, and columns have gone up honoring such natives as pro basketball's George Mikan and subjects like city firefighters and Route 66. Now the FCPA has published a book of poetry inspired by the works. This is from local poet Ted Thompson's tribute to Route 66:

"The last of a century of pioneers / Traveled that road in beat-up Chevies / Getting their kicks dreaming of new beginnings / Until the west filled up / Into megalopolis / And the dream faded / Into the smog and gridlock / Of an outsourced reality.

"But while the dream motored on / America was young / And believed it could do anything- / And that anything it did was right- / Now we enshrine that road- / Writing elegies to our lost innocence / Erecting this tombstone for the dream.

FCPA does a really nice job with public art around town. Being an old railroad town, Joliet has more than it fair share of viaducts, whose drab concrete walls could otherwise be rather unsightly eyesores. But FCPA's murals (gallery here) on the viaduct walls (and elsewhere) are lively and colorful tributes to the people, places and events of Joliet's history. The identity columns (gallery here) are a more recent development which pay similar tribute at intersections further away from downtown. Definitely worth checking out if you're ever in the area.