Crystal Ville, Riviere du Vieux Fort
My home is the State of Illinois rather than a town within its borders. Since I was born, my parents have moved five times and they’re preparing for at least one more relocation. In addition to my own seven moves between Wisconsin and Illinois, I am become Midwestern. Yesterday I drove to Crystal Lake and Waukegan to make some attempts at reinterpretation of the visual data from my formative years in those places. Before yesterday I hadn’t seen Waukegan in ten years, and my childhood block in Crystal Lake in twenty.
While walking through my old neighborhood in Crystal Lake I saw two protruding burls on a tree planted in the verge at the north end of the block. I remembered when I compared them to a contusion on my knee after I had fallen off my bike while learning to ride without training wheels some time in the early 1990’s. The memory serves more purpose than a photograph.
My time in Waukegan yesterday was more of an analysis than general recollection since those memories are a persisting conceptual resource. I have made at least one painting about my time spent on the lakeshore by the downtown area, on my way to investigate the motor fabrication warehouses and gravel and sand mills that flank Seahorse Drive and the public beach.
The lakeshore in Waukegan has been a consideration for new residential and commercial development for at least thirty years. The now-defunct Outboard Marine Corporation was one of a few entities responsible for extensive environmental damage to the soil, natural dunes, and water on the lakefront. Between the OMC plant and the nearby Waukegan Glass & Coke company which processed coal-based fuels, polychlorinated biphenyl and trichloroethylene were discovered to be leaking into the soil and lake along with evidence of ammonia, creosote, arsenic, and phenol contamination in those areas. Hundreds of acres of land were purchased by the City for $1.00 then converted into Superfund sites that are slowly being cleared in a soil removal and replacement process that costs millions.
History embeds itself in the architectural detail of buildings that guard the oldest blocks of Waukegan. A handful of distinctive Italianate mansions punctuate dozens of historic homes along Sheridan Road on the north side. They overlook the coal plant through curtains of transmission lines next to the Superfund sites on the lakeshore, all parts of the glacial assemblage that denotes the aesthetic of Waukegan since its incorporation in 1849.
The downtown and lakeshore area became source material when I studied photography in 2005. Because I relocated some of my decade-old regular spots by memory and instinct yesterday, some of the angular motifs and compositional arrangements I use in my more recent drawing work started making more sense to me.
Taking a new survey of Waukegan forced me to consider its content yet again. Most the changes made to the area in the past decade are invisible. Empty lots abbreviating century-old institutions are simply thoughts to be finished.
