Chicago Sculpture Exhibit comes to Greektown
Take a walk along Halsted Street in Chicago’s Greektown neighborhood and be amazed! Two outstanding new sculptures will grab your attention, now on view as part of the annual Chicago Sculpture Exhibit (CSE). This year, CSE is celebrating 20 years of bringing large-scale and innovative sculptures to Chicago neighborhoods. The Greektown Arts Committee is delighted to support its mission of inspiring communities through public art.
Below are details on these Greektown artworks, where you can find them, and statements from artists Tess Little and Charles Pilkey.
“By the Light of the Moon” by Tess Little
Location: Inside the Greek temple at the southeast corner of Monroe & Halsted Streets
Artist’s statement: “My sculpture celebrates the light of the moon and its universal wonder. The moon bends water with the tide making it rise and fall like magic. It waxes and wanes and changes from a tiny sliver to a full silver ball, guiding the earth cycles of plating, caring for the young and moving camp to survive the winter. The Moon shows us a way to count seasons. From its movement across the sky, it creates a path to read the stars and understand the universe. It provides a refuge and rest from the blistering light of the sun, bathing the world in a glow of silver.”
Tess Little is an award-winning artist and art professor at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio. She is a fierce organizer and originator of community art projects. Her sculptures have been in numerous group shows and solo art exhibitions. Permanent installations of her public art sculptures “Imagine Piece” and “The Friendship Arch” celebrate the joy of community. Tess founded “REACH Across Dayton” to raise awareness and promote appreciation for the area’s diverse cultural population.
“The Forest at Night” by Charles Pilkey
Location: Elysian Field at the southeast corner of Van Buren & Halsted Streets
Artist’s Statement: “I have no family ties to Greece, yet years ago when I saw the Acropolis for the first time I felt an immediate kinship with the site, as if after years of wandering I’d finally come home. Not surprising perhaps after a lifetime studying Greek art, philosophy and literature. I am pleased to show “The Forest at Night” in Chicago’s Greektown, for the ancient Greeks would have appreciated its message of the beauty and mystery of a star-lit forest. Here’s a toast to Chicago’s immigrant Greek community, whose forebears sailed farther on the wine dark seas of imagination than any before and who gave us so many wonderful storytellers from Homer to Kazantzakis … cheers and stin ygeiá sas!”
Charles Pilkey is a former geologist turned freelance sculptor, writer and illustrator. Pilkey is a river rat raised in the green hills of Carolina on a steady diet of hard work and Sunday sermons. A wandering spirit whose works lie scattered as weeds across three continents, Charles would love to carve stone on the moon one day.
