As these works leave our physical, our issues (until addressed) remain evermore. Chicago is in need of reversing it’s relationship with water. From a one of abuse and mistreatment to one of respectful use and treatment. As a citizen of one of the greenest cities in the nation, I know Chicagoians want a sustainable and clean enviroment. We must not forget the blue while we think green.
“Chicago is the nation’s only major city that doesn’t disinfect its wastewater before pumping it back into the environment.” Obama, U.S. EPA push for cleaner Chicago River; June 01, 2010 Michael Hawthorne, Tribune reporter
Mural 1 of 7, "You and I need to talk". Love, The Lake @ Johalla Projects
In a symbolic gesture towards Chicago’s misuse of Lake Michigan, I’d like to personally invite you and the City of Chicago to watch this work wash away forever. At dusk I’ll be removing this last communication in the 7 piece series. Just as our water, our issues, our lake and our river… you can come watch it wash away. The perfect view is across the street from Wicker Park’s Ear Wax cafe. 8:3p-ish.
All of these works are in conjunction with Call to Action / It Our Water / Moving Design and their real efforts to reform Chicago’s waterways into a clean and sustainable system.
2 of 7, "We could be forever". Love, the Lake. @ Cap'n Jazz street performance.
Love, The Lake is an ephemera exposition dialoguing water’s relationship with Chicago. Over seven days, communication-artist Nick Adam created and removed one mural a day at Chicago’s Johalla Projects that anthropomorphizes our relationship with water. This series was spawned from Nick’s Wet-Work: Water Murals project.
3 of 7, "Only if we change" Love, The Lake. Photo reversed from interior.
Wet-work: Water Murals
Emotions, knowledge, space and time are the ever-evolving components of experience. With the spread of knowledge life is endlessly progressing with each moment. Lasting accurately transmitted thoughts and memories have been possible through the application of symbols to surface. Communicating in archival forms provides documentation for a seeming eternity, these documents lay and hang as permanent proofs of existence. Accurately expressing pen-to-paper that which lives in a state consistent reverberation, is a conceptual clash.
4 of 7, "Our use". Love, the Lake @ 1561 N. Milwaukee, 2am
Water; purely ephemera, highly volatile, as timely and precious as a moment. It flows as a beautiful vital medium. Since forever but not for forever, just as our lakes, as our rivers, our rain, all the taps. These works are points of awareness. They stand and age as proof of life, watch them wash away.
5 of 7, "The other cities show respect." Love, the Lake @ Johalla Projects in Wicker Park
The water is ours, yours and mine, the birds and bees, all the plants and all the trees. Life is a relationship between being and water. All of what water exist today was here day-one of Earth. Every drink, shower, and flush has been used before. Water has a past, a story. The correspondence is of our relationship, the details are based on usage and treatment. I know we want a sustainable and clean relationship with water. It all starts with awareness.
6 of 7, "We can fix us" Love, The Lake @ evening rush-hour in Wicker Park
What was once a naturally renewing cycle, Chicago transformed both literally and linearly into a drain via reversing the Chicago River. 99% water in Chicago’s drains, flushes and sewers does not get disinfected and flows out to the Chicago River, downstate, to the Mississippi and out to the Gulf. Along the way humans and nature taste and learn our story… of (ab)use and (mis)treatment. Chicago is capable and willing of so much more.
7 of 7, "Love, The Lake". The ball is in our court. Can Chicago change?
View progress shots in the slide-show.
Oscar Arriola posted some brilliant photos of the project on his flickr.
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