My trip to Chicago was extremely cold and very gray. However, I did have the opportunity to visit Millennium Park, which was officially finished last summer. One of its features is the Crown Fountain designed by Spanish sculptor Jaume Plensa. The two 50-foot glass video towers that bookend the fountain feature monolithic faces of anonymous Chicagoans that frown and smile and gaze back at one another from across the plaza.
It’s a gorgeous piece of public sculpture that in the summer features spouts of water that shoot from the mouths and disappear into a rectangle of cracks in the cement, a hidden “reflecting pool” that you can walk on. Even though it was freezing, I couldn’t help but be warmed up by this interaction, which provided nearly the only color in the landscape on that chilly December day.
More on Millennium Park later…
