'Bean' to get a companion: The 'Popsicle'
By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah | Tribune staff reporter
October 31, 2007
Millennium Park, home of iconic pieces of public art such as "Cloud Gate" and the video gargoyles of Crown Fountain, will offer yet another cool installation this winter?-a multicolored wall of ice, 95 feet long, with abstract patterns and shards of ice jutting out.
From afar, the 13-foot-tall sheets of brilliantly hued ice will look like a giant canvas of contemporary art. From close up, visitors can watch the pigments interact with the crystal ice structures, changing as parts of the wall evaporate, melt and freeze again.
Plans for the installation by Canadian artist Gordon Halloran, who was commissioned for similar work during the 2006 Turin Olympic Winter Games, will be unveiled Thursday. But in an interview Wednesday he discussed the paradox of his artwork?-keeping it intact while allowing nature to take its course.
Moniker cool, creator says of Millennium art
By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah | Tribune staff reporter
"Popsicle" sticks.
The nickname for a proposed ice sculpture in Millennium Park, coined in a Tribune headline Thursday, is fine with Canadian artist Gordon Halloran, he said as he announced plans for the multicolored wall of ice.
The installation, officially named "Paintings Below Zero," is scheduled to be on display Feb. 1 through Feb. 29. Standing 13 feet high and stretching 95 feet across the promenade, it will face another sculpture with a catchy moniker: the "Bean."
Halloran said he had a feeling Chicago would find a nickname for his piece, which in places will have brightly painted sheets of ice in Popsicle colors, lime green and cherry red, along with pigmented shards of ice jutting out.
"I was thinking of the 'Bean' and I knew I wouldn't have a choice in it," he said.
Warming to the subject, he said his ice sculpture would be pop art, and he'd like it to be popular.
"I'm hoping [the nickname] will catch people's imagination and they'll want to come and see it," he said.
But he warned people not to get carried away with the Popsicle idea and get their tongues stuck to it.
Halloran spoke Thursday at a news conference, at which a computer-generated rendering of his wall was unveiled.
Visitors will be able to touch parts of the wall.
With lighting from the back and front of the sculpture, art enthusiasts will be able to watch pigments interact with ice crystals as the surface evaporates, melts and freezes. It will be kept frozen by chilled glycol running through aluminum panels at the core of the wall.
The project will also feature a painting in the park's ice rink over which people can skate.
The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, which is organizing the event, hopes to attract tourists and residents to the park with free, ice-related activities built around the display.
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