Gift to Grant Park `not a decoration'

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Original link: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0610270183oct27,1,7164077.story

	Artist Magdalena Abakanowicz talks Thursday about the 9-foot-tall sculptures that form her "Agora" installation in Grant Park. "People must approach these with their imagination," she says.
	"I'm not making a decoration," Abakanowicz says. "I'm making a statement, a statement about nature and our consciousness."
	Abakanowicz helps a worker position one of her creations.
	Another of the figures is moved for installation in Grant Park. The $3.5 million work is a gift from the artist and the Polish Ministry of Culture.
	"They must be like one body that represents so many different meanings," Abakanowicz says of her figures. "It's the self against the whole world."
	The artist walks among some of the 106 figures. She says each sculpture is different because they are hand-molded, the texture made to resemble the bark of tree trunks.

By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah
Tribune staff reporter

October 27, 2006

Magdalena Abakanowicz walked through a forest of her headless sculptures in Grant Park on Thursday, sliding her weathered, rust-covered hands over their rugged, cast-iron skin.

The Polish artist, less than waist high to her own creations, gestured freely in the drizzle, examining the postures of the controversial figures and serving up enigmatic bits of explanation along the way.

"Every crowd is like a headless organism," she said, looking out at the 44 pieces raised this week in a fenced-off area. "People must approach these with their imagination."

The pieces face--in their faceless way--different directions from their concrete perch. Some of their giant feet point at one another. Others appear to turn away.

Titled "Agora," Abakanowicz's work will ultimately include 106 pieces of 9-foot-high sculpture, remaking the look of the premier lakefront stretch yet again--this time in a way that may draw stronger reactions than did the crowd-friendly Bean sculpture and Crown Fountain to the north.

The 76-year-old artist does not apologize for that.

"I'm not making a decoration," she said, pulling her damp fleece hat down over brown hair and oversize glasses. "I'm making a statement, a statement about nature and our consciousness."

And that statement is?

"People who never went through war will associate this with a shell, or like a forgotten garment," she said.

But she added that those who watch television cannot help but see war all around them, in Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Iraq and Iran: "At wartime, we worship leaders as a crowd or we hate leaders as a crowd."

The internationally known artist began to install her pieces in the south end of Grant Park this week. On Thursday, she and the Chicago Park District allowed reporters a preview.

The $3.5 million work is a gift from the artist and the Polish Ministry of Culture. Park officials have raised about two thirds of the more than $800,000 needed for installation and maintenance of the sculptures with money from corporate and private donors, including actor and Abakanowicz fan Robin Williams. She began working on the project about two years ago. It will be unveiled Nov. 16.

Neil Miltonberger, 44, lives a block south of the installation, and walks by the site twice a day.

"I personally don't like it, especially for that location," he said. "It's very stark and cold and not a welcoming entrance to that part of Grant Park."

But Sara Levinson, who lives across the street from the sculptures, looked on admiringly.

"The sculptures take natural and human forms and blend them," she said.

Abakanowicz's history may help explain her art.

She was born into an aristocratic family in Poland. When she was 9, she saw Nazi soldiers shoot her mother's arm off. She lived in Warsaw under Soviet occupation, designing large assemblages out of hemplike material, pieces that could be tucked away in her tiny studio.

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