In Remembrance
Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Each year in the spring, I get antsy and start up an art project. 75% of them get finished and stored away, the other 25% never come to fruition. None of them are ever any good, but a great diversion nonetheless. I blame this all on Sally Field who enrolled me in oil painting one summer - probably an attempt to get my obnoxious pre-teen ass out of the house. This year, doors have been on my mind a lot. If you let it develop, the notion of a door (as well as the object itself) becomes a complex metaphor for many things -- hospitality, privacy, self-expression, status, and interpersonal relationships.

I spent some time last weekend wandering Lincoln Park and Lakeview, taking pictures of doors. Residential, commercial, whatever. Then I remembered that some of the city's most beautiful doors are on the mausoleums at Graceland Cemetary- I'd been there once before. This historical cemetary is the resting place of so many Chicago and Midwestern magnates, it's almost ridiculous. Out of respect for the dead, I won't be posting any of the photos I took while I was there (save the one you see above, and only because it doesn't show a name). If you're curious, photos can be found on the municipal website. Among those buried here: Kimball, Potter-Palmer, Mies van der Rohe, Getty, Kinzie, Hubbard, Pullman, Burnham, Honoré, Goodman, Altgeld, Field, Wacker, Clark, and both of the former mayors Harrison.

History aside, the place is totally gorgeous. I drove in to find the Getty and Wolff doors (my two favorites) and leave...an hour later, I was still driving around in awe of the size and grandeur of some of the monuments. Big doors, iron doors, rusted doors, stone doors -- all of them closed, perhaps never to be opened again.

It got me wondering - why the big, huge, markers? Some of the mausoleums and gravestones are larger than my first apartment! Was it simply a representation of the exaggerated lifestyles of the people who are buried there, or was it something greater - vanity, perhaps? We all know you can't take it with you when you go, so why bother? I love Daniel Burnham's gravesite because it's a simple rock on the side of a beautiful hilly island. The man was an artist-- an architectural genius with a vision that continues to be developed today in our city. He chose a rock. Not a bunch of columns, or a stained glass window, or an ornate iron gate.

When I go, I want my family to be able to come back to something more than a stone box with a lock on the front. No doors for me - I think I'll just pick a rock.