TRAILBLAZER

How an SAIC faculty member is modeling new pathways for artists

by Jeremy Ohmes
S cho o l o f t h e A r t In s t i t u t e of C hica g o s ai c . e d u/ hi g hl i g hts

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F r a n c e s W h i t e h e a d o n T h e 6 0 6 . P h o t o s : J e r z y R o s e ( B FA 2 0 0 8 )

An elevated path stretches out like a forgotten scar on the face of Chicagos Northwest side. Dead-end railroad tracks run the length of the pathjust short of three miles. A few freight cars, covered in graffiti and filled with gravel, leave the impression of commerce and use. The uprooted trees, broken bottles, and splintered railroad ties suggest otherwise. This is the future site of The 606. Named for the first three digits of Chicagos zip code, The 606 will be a multiuse recreational trail and park system adapted from an elevated rail line, which runs east to west through four Chicago neighborhoods. Scheduled to open in the fall of 2014, The 606 will offer walking and biking paths, picnic areas, event plazas, performance spaces, integrated artworks, varied topography, and diverse native and ornamental plantings. The public greenway is being branded as Chicagos next great park and the requisite army of designers, landscape architects, engineers, community stakeholders, city officials, and conservation agents are doing their best to live up to that claim.

Pacing along the tracks, Whitehead gestures, points, and impassions on the environmental and ecological issues rooted in the path. She talks about soil conditions, unused rail lines, and post-industrial landscapes through the lens of industrial and cultural heritage. She says, We only think of cultural heritage a s t h e g o o d s t u f f, b u t w e a l s o i n h e r i t a l o t t h a t i s d e g r a d e d , disturbed, and needs work. How do we revalue it, reuse it, and learn from it? Whitehead is in a rare position to actualize the answers to those questions through a major public project, with support from local and national agencies. The 606 is not the first time Whitehead has engaged a city to address cultural, social, or environmental challenges. In fact, over the last decade, she has made a habit of nudging her way into nontraditional orbitsmoving beyond galleries and museums into the civic arenas where artists rarely roam. During her 30-year career, Whitehead gradually morphed her fine art practice into a deeper engagement in public practice. Nature, science, and sustainability always informed her work as she exhibited plant-based sculptures and works in galleries and public sites. But around 2000, with concerns of global warming circling the public s mind, Whitehead became politicized around climate change and environmental crises. She studied sustainability theory and design futures, investigating how artists can make meaningful contributions to the challenges ahead. She established SAICs Knowledge Lab, a collaborative environment where students and faculty identify important subjectssuch as energy, waste, or urban agricultureand formulate transdisciplinary projects to produce new knowledge.

We inherit a lot that is degraded and needs work. How do we revalue it, reuse it, and learn from it?

For SAIC Professor Frances Whitehead, Lead Artist on The 606 Design Team, the making of The 606 holds other possibilities for the future of art practice. Working with, between, and among various parties and deploying an aesthetic that includes cultural expression, innovation, participation, and sustainability, Whitehead is bringing together art, design, science, and civic engagement for the public good. As a member of the Design Te a m , W h i t e h e a d i s w o r k i n g t o r e i m a g i n e t h e a b a n d o n e d r a i l line and how an urban trail can inspire, engage, and educate its surrounding citizens.

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In 2005 she found her way into the center of Cleveland, Ohios plans to reclaim and revitalize the Steelyard Commons area in the Cuyahoga River Valley. Joined by designer and fellow SAIC faculty member Lisa Norton, Whitehead made a case that artists should be part of the citys formal planning process in order to integrate art and sustainability concepts. Norton says that Whitehead saw the project as a successful example of the valuable role that artists can play in public planning and speculative city futures. She notes, From a firsthand, in-depth understanding of how artists are situated within systems, Fr a n c e s i s i n t e n t i o n a l l y s e e k i n g t o m o d e l n e w w a y s o f b e i n g an artist. This idea that artists can provide new perspectives on civic endeavors led Whitehead to develop the Embedded Artist Projecta partnership between SAIC and the City of Chicago to creatively address civic challenges by embedding practicing artists in city departments. I asked, what is my knowledge base, and where is the agency to affect change? explains Whitehead. So I wandered into City Halland offered my services, my cultural literacy. What I found was that the city was very excited about new ideas and new thinking. She collaborated with Chicagos Department of Planning and Department of Environment on a phytoremediation project to clean up abandoned gas stations also known as brownfields around the city. Working with soil scientists, botanists, and community members, The Slow Cleanup project team has identified at least 12 new ornamental plant remediator species that will expand the aesthetic potential of clean-up sites, enhancing communities in the interim. Now as lead artist for The 606, Whitehead is bringing the methods, mindsets, and strategies of a contemporary artist to the process of shaping the future city.

For most of the 20th century the trail was a commercial route for the Canadian Pacificowned Soo Line Railroadan artery to bring goods and materials into Chicago and to distribute local products like Schwinn bicycles, Lincoln Logs, and Hammond organs to the world. By 2001 freight on the route had come to a standstill, and the rail line fell into disrepair. Subsequently, the elevated pathout of sight but forever hoveringbecame a refuge for trespassers of all stripes: vagrants, foragers, urban explorers, love-struck teenagers, curious passersby, joggers, walkers, and trail runners. Locals named the path The Bloomingdale Trail or The Bloomingdale due to its trajectory along Bloomingdale Avenue, and rumors swirled about the former rail line being transformed into a linear park. In 2003 the grassroots nonprofit F r i e n d s o f t h e B l o o m i n g d a l e Tr a i l ( F B T ) f o r m e d t o a d v o c a t e for this transformation. And in 2004, working with FBT and other community members, the City of Chicago, Chicago Park District, and the Chicago Department of Transportation developed an open-space plan to address the lack of public parks and recreational opportunities on the citys Northwest Side. An official, City Councilapproved Bloomingdale Trail was featured in the plan. Over the next nine years, public meetings were held, community members were heard, plans and blueprints were proposed, land was bought, funds were raised, and agencies were assigned roles to help move the trail from concept to reality. Currently, the City of Chicagos Department of Housing and Economic Development oversees the overall planning, while the Chicago Department of Transportation is shepherding the engineering, design, and construction of the trail. The Chicago Park District will own and manage the park once it is completed. Additionally, in a unique arrangement with the City of Chicago, national land conservation group, The Trust for Public Land (TPL), is leading the project management of the greenway. TPL selected an interdisciplinary design team of civil and structural engineers, landscape architects, and Whitehead as the Lead Artist. Beth White, Chicago Area Office Director of TPL, says that Whitehead inherited the charge to transform The 606 into a living work of art. She took that objective and made it operational, explains White. In one of our first meetings Frances said, Yo u h a v e t o m a k e i t l i v i n g , m a k e i t w o r k , a n d make it artful .

Im looking to make art with purpose. Im looking for both art and design, both art and science.

O b s e r v a t o r y, F r a n c e s W h i t e h e a d , C o l l i n s E n g i n e e r s , M i c h a e l V a n V a l k e n b u r g h A s s o c i a t e s , i n c o l l a b o r a t i o n w i t h A d l e r P l a n e t a r i u m , C h i c a g o , 2 0 1 3 . C o u r t e s y o f T h e Tr u s t f o r P u b l i c L a n d , City of Chic ago, and Chic ago Park Dis tric t

ART + SCIENCE

RIDGEWAY OBSERVATORY
USING THE VIEWING DEVICE

EARTH WORK

Seasonal View of Trains + Sky Natural + Cultural Heritage

SPRING FALL

RIDGEWAY AT SUNSET

SUMMER SUN

N
32 angle for summer 32 angle for winter

SPRING + AUTUMN EQUINOXES WINTER SOLSTICE

SUMMER SOLSTICE

WEST

EAST

E W

View sunset through notches established at 32 degrees

December Solstice

HORIZ ON

observer

Photo: World Monument Fund

June Solstice

Solstice Diagrams

Chankillo, Peru, Ancient Solar Observatory

RTUS IN URB E HO

Photo: World Monument Fund

March Equinox September Equinox

The Trust for Public Land is The 606 project manager, in partnership with the Chicago Park District and City of Chicago.

RIDGEWAY AT NIGHT

S cho o l o f t h e A r t In s t i t u t e of C hica g o s ai c . e d u/ hi g hl i g hts

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Walking the length of The 606 on a crisp, blue day, Whitehead offers some visual guidance on how she has tackled that challenge. She worked with Chicagos Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events to create and integrate opportunities for other artists and the arts into the trail. This includes a series of invitational commissions, open calls for temporary and revolving works, installations, performances, and participatory pieces. There will be a commissioned piece that will visualize live data sets, as well as rotating galleries of interpretive and sitespecific worksall reflecting the diversity of the community, the history of the trail, and the possibilities for its future. There will also be programming and partnerships that will connect citizens, schools, visitors, and local institutions to the trail. Working closely and collaboratively with the Design Team and other specialty designers and scientists, Whitehead proposed and developed three major works for The 606, one at each trailhead and a linear work running the full length of the trail. Claiming a seamless and integrative aesthetic, she calls these embedded artworks, creating creative sites that hybridize art and design, art and science, and art and recreation in new ways. At the western trailhead Whitehead draws a circle in the a i r. S h e a n d t h e d e s i g n t e a m c o l l a b o r a t e d w i t h t h e A d l e r Planetarium to create a spiraling earthwork that will serve as a seasonal observatory. Inspired by ancient astronomy-based s t r u c t u r e s s u c h a s T h i r t e e n To w e r s i n C h a n k i l l o , P e r u , t h e Ridgeway Observatory will be driven by solar alignments and the longitude of Chicago. The circular moundconstructed out of reused soil and rubblewill provide views of sunsets and stars, re-grounding audiences in the geographic reality along an ancient timeline.

Connecting the ends of The 606, Whitehead is collaborating with Chicago Wilderness Alliance and the USA National Phenologic Network to develop a climate-monitoring installation. The artwork will consist of a line of 453 native, flowering trees (Apple Serviceberry), whose five-day bloom spread will visualize Chicagos famous Lake Effect. The temperature-sensitive plants (what Whitehead calls environmental sentinels) will reveal how large bodies of water like Lake Michigan affect local temperature patterns in spring and fall. Modeled after Japanese cherry blossoms whose transient blooming attracts audiences a n d s i g n i f i e s w a r m e r w e a t h e r, t h e c o n c e p t o f t h i s b l o o m i n g , phenologic spectacle will allow scientists and citizens to study climate change and observe natures relationship to the Lake Effect. These embedded artworks along The 606 seem far removed from the world of art galleries. They extend the artistic traditions of earthworks and site-specific interventions; however, for most audiences, a solar observatory, a skate park/performance space, and a climate-monitoring planting align more with science and design. But poking holes through these disciplinary models and challenging limited ideas of art is what defines Whiteheads practice. A self-described edge dweller, she says, Designers see me as an artist and artists see me as a designer. But Im looking to make art with purpose. Im looking for both art and design, both art and science. This both/and animates Whiteheads work and serves as a model for how artists can use their knowledge for civic innovation to address cultural, social, and environmental issues. It is an example of how artists can work collaboratively across disciplines to reimagine future cities and communitiesone trail at a time.

Fo r t h e e a s t e r n t r a i l h e a d W h i t e h e a d w o r k e d w i t h d e s i g n f i r m Spohn Ranch to create a multigenerational, interactive skate park and event plaza. Conscious of the high-carbon footprint of cement-based skate parks, she is maximizing the sites function and performativity by making it radically multifunctional. The parkbuilt with the Sk a t e P a r k + Ev e n t Pl a z a , F r a n c e s W h i t e h e a d , C o l l i n s E n g i n e e r s , M i c h a e l V a n V a l k e n b u r g h requisite rails, verts, and manual padsdoubles A s s o c i a t e s , i n c o l l a b o r a t i o n w i t h S p o h n R a n c h , C h i c a g o , 2 0 1 3 . C o u r t e s y o f T h e Tr u s t f o r a s a p e r f ormanc e v e nue com plete with s ta ges , Public L and, City of Chic ago, and Chic ago Park Dis tric t acoustics, sound barriers, and what she calls a sm a r t b e an an i nt e r ac tive s culptura l object that pops open to program the sound system and SMART PIPE AUDIO KIOSK lighting displays. It s a plaza-style skate park SKATE PARK that can host farmers markets in the morning + EVENT PLAZA WALSH PARK and music at night, she hollers over the din of Wheel Friendly Radically Multi-functional the nearby Kennedy Expressway. My vision is High Performance Public Space kids skating on one side while Mom is listening to Yo-Yo Ma on the other.

ART + DESIGN

16'

10" TYP.

9' DIA

7'-10"

6'-10"

5'-9"

EQUIP. RACK (SR-40-32)

DOOR / RAMP IN OPEN POSITION

AUDIO CONTROLS

EQUIP. RACK (SR-40-32)

LIGHTING CONTROLS

DOOR / RAMP IN OPEN POSITION

SECTION

PLAN

10

20

Perforated metal cladding covers concrete pipe kiosk

SKATE

SOUND

STAGE

SEATING

Sound Barrier

Stage Kiosk

Skate Plaza

33 ft

WALSH PARK SKATE PLAZA + PERFORMANCE VENUE

SOUND BARRIER WALL

SMART ACORN LIGHTS

30 ft

ACORN BASE SITE FURNISHINGS

27 ft

24 ft

21 ft

18 ft

Large Cafe Table

Small Cafe Table

Small Seat

Large Seat/ Table

Large Stable Table

Acorn Bollard

Acorn Speaker

15 ft

12 ft

9 ft
RTUS IN URB E HO

6 ft

3 ft

2 ft

The Trust for Public Land is The 606 project manager, in partnership with the Chicago Park District and City of Chicago.

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