October 2024

POTD: Phoenix

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Phoenix
Chicago, Illinois
2024

I thought about what this sculpture meant for a long time without thinking of anything in particular except that it probably had something to do with agrarian pursuits. I finally googled it to find out it’s real story. (I was barely in the ballpark of the intended meaning.) The sculpture is by  Milton Horn and was created and installed (not in this location) in the mid-1950s. According to Wikipedia:

It is a 7 ft x 12 ft sculpture and it weighs 3.5 tons. The sculpture is a depiction of a woman holding grain in her hand while she embraces a bull. There is also an eagle in the piece. The design of the sculpture represents the city of Chicago’s dominance of commodities markets in the mid-1950s. The design elements also show the rebirth of Chicago as a leader in transportation, and it was a depiction of the Chicago Stockyards.

The woman in the sculpture is standing hip deep in the water of Lake Michigan with carved flames representing the Great Chicago Fire. She is rising from both the lake and from the fire that once destroyed Chicago. The sculpture also has three-dimensional bronze bars which represent the railroad. The bars run diagonally across the center of the piece representing Chicago’s location in the middle of the United States.

The sculpture apparently didn’t grab the hearts of Chicago, or at least those in control of it, as it was first installed in a parking garage, then lost until 1987 where it was found in an empty swimming pool and moved only to be lost again and found in a dump in 1997. It was restored and a year later placed in its current location, a kind of out of the way spot on the Chicago Riverwalk.

I titled the image “Phoenix” because of the representation of the woman rising from the Chicago fire, and also because it rose from the storage dumps to be put on display again.

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