Glen Elder

2018, Garden Project, Arts Club of Chicago  

The design of this work is tailored, first of all, to its urban site and landscaping in the garden of the Arts Club of Chicago. The sculpture resembles a trellis structure, complicated by two angled wings offering an implied moiré effect. This painted configuration stands ten feet tall on the garden’s central slab with a pair of stone- like footings at the base of the main posts, aligned side to side (in reference to Shaker fence construction).


Within the incomplete diagonal pattern of the “trellis” composition is the fleeting notation of Brancusi’s Endless Column (for both the artist’s importance to the Arts Club’s history and his 1939 proposal of an “Endless Column” skyscraper on Lake Michigan). Beyond the two established cast aluminum “footings”, three similar forms are situated on adjacent slabs, acknowledging the proportions of the garden space while making reference in their measured spacing to classical column bases.