This weekend, I found myself on the South Side of Chicago, dodging rain and doing a little construction for the Rebuild Foundation. Saturday, I was up fairly early, digesting the headlines and trying to get in the laundry room before the rest of the building snapped up the machines. After some breakfast and chores around the apartment, I loaded my tools into the 'rolla and wound my way to the highway. The Dan Ryan Expressway is a miserable piece of urban engineering: it slices the city in half, and, despite seven lanes in each direction, was moving at less than twenty miles an hour on a Saturday. During the week, it is a nightmare, beat to a standstill for about six hours a day. As Kevin Costner once asserted, if you build it, they will come -- the worst scenario for a highway, as each expansion in lane width merely attracts more traffic and compounds the problem.
At any rate, after about forty-five minutes, I made it to the Chicago HQ of the Rebuild Foundation, started by Theaster Gates, artist, educator, and all-around renaissance man. I couldn't figure out the gate to the place (typical), and I didn't have the phone number (also typical) of my contact there, Charlie Vinz. So, in (typically) bewildered fashion, I wandered around the alley for a minute until Charlie appeared at the fence and let me in. I felt an immediate, powerful sense of place -- the house was a sense memory of Greensboro, radiating the same scents, sights, and scenes as my old home. It was deeply reminiscent of PieLab, built as it was out of old lumber and odd bits of imagination.
At any rate, after about forty-five minutes, I made it to the Chicago HQ of the Rebuild Foundation, started by Theaster Gates, artist, educator, and all-around renaissance man. I couldn't figure out the gate to the place (typical), and I didn't have the phone number (also typical) of my contact there, Charlie Vinz. So, in (typically) bewildered fashion, I wandered around the alley for a minute until Charlie appeared at the fence and let me in. I felt an immediate, powerful sense of place -- the house was a sense memory of Greensboro, radiating the same scents, sights, and scenes as my old home. It was deeply reminiscent of PieLab, built as it was out of old lumber and odd bits of imagination.
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| The Dorchester Street house of the Rebuild Foundation, with facade of salvaged wood. |
