"Community of the Future"

Quarry Park, Bridgeport, Chicago, IL, USA, Earth.

Bridgeport's quarry park is a fascinating place. There's a pond surrounded by cliffs (where the quarry used to be) beside a hill (where the dirt from the quarry is now). Some ingenious landscape architect got the city to put in a raised metal walkway that wraps around the hill and ends in a platform by the pond. From the hill, just beyond the flickering highway, you can see downtown Chicago. If you look to the West, you'll also see smokestacks mixed in with church steeples. On July 4th, there's a 360-degree fireworks show put on by the people of Bridgeport, which goes on for several hours. We once saw a fox lurking by the water, and one year there was a pair of alarmingly white Pekin ducks living in the pond.

All this is to say: if this picture is weird, blame it on the weirdness of quarry park. Some people call Bridgeport the "community of the future" and it certainly seems like time is out of joint there. It's not a coherent place with a constant thread or stylistic theme. The sun and moon hang out in the sky together. There's beauty and charm in its ugliness. It's a paradox.

The other day I found this quick sketch of Bridgeport's quarry park (drawn with a thick blue marker) taped in an old sketchbook. I scanned it and added the colors with Photoshop. I'm still not completely pleased with it (I think if I worked on it more I might remove the strange chicken waddle arms coming out of the bubble lady's head), but my attention span is short. As is life.