Saturday, March 11, 2006

Dancin’ at the Cloud Gate

I met Chris and his buddies taking advantage of an early spring day in Chicago to work on some dance moves at Millennium Park. Chris drew the most enthusiastic response from the group for one of his moves, so I asked if he wouldn’t mind reprising his feat in front of Cloud Gate for me. Chris gamely obliged for a couple of shots.

Appearing as if a giant drop of liquid mercury descended from the sky, Cloud Gate is a 110-ton elliptical sculpture, forged of a seamless series of highly polished stainless steel plates, which reflect the city's skyline and the clouds above. It marks the Michigan Avenue entrance to the park. Workers are presently putting the final touches on the underbelly. When complete, visitors will be able to pass underneath the sculpture and view their changing reflections.

I can always be identified as a suburbanite on my trips into Chicago by the fact that I am constantly looking up at the architecture and skyline, while the city dwellers maintain their been-here-seen-that, eyes-straight-out gaze. Cloud gate helps bridge that gap by giving urbanites a glimpse of what’s up there.

Click on pictures to enlarge. Photographs © 2006 James Jordan.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey James,

You wanna check out some really crazy b-boy (breakdancer) moves?

Check this out . . .
And this . . .

Anonymous said...

Very cool shot, he looks to be reaching up to touch it. Nicely composed (and for that matter staged) shot.

James said...

glenn, yup, they're crazy all right. Thanks for passing those along.

rob, thanks. I'm not sure that I wanted to say anything in particlular with the shot, I was just looking for something interesting to place near the Cloud Gate and Chris and his friends were there.

Anonymous said...

I particularly like the first image. Well done. And very cool sculpture.

Kristal said...

Gorgeous! My sister-in-law lives in Chicago and sent me some pictures of this. I'm thinking I need to go and visit, if only to get the chance to see/photograph it myself!