It took a good part of Wednesday morning to make my way from Joliet to the Chicago airport (I'm so glad I learned to drive in a really big city) and while I was waiting for Mac to emerge from the gate, I had the misfortune to stand in the wrong spot several times much to the distress of a couple of zealous TSA agents; but I managed to shrug it all off after I'd picked up my dear friend and the two of us had set off to spend some time together in the marvelous Midwest.
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To further indulge the taste for Henry Darger that I had whetted while in Lincoln, we stopped at the Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in the Cabrini Green area of Chicago. I had stumbled upon a link to the Center's website while I was reading about Henry on Wikipedia and when I learned that the Center had the contents of Henry's Chicago apartment on display, I simply couldn't get there fast enough. I hold a sort of hero worship for Darger and to be able to see the way he lived and the materials he used borders on sacred to me.
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Precious little is known about Henry but the majority of the things that are known about him are a direct result of diligent efforts by his ex-landlords to preserve his life's work. Henry worked in secrecy his entire life to produce a 15,000 page plus manuscript along with a multitude of paintings and drawings. And yet none of it was discovered until the day before his death in 1973. Intuit worked with Henry's landlord to carefully preserve the contents of his tiny apartment. The items were installed using photographs as a reference in order to meticulously reproduce the space where Henry had lived for 45 years.
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Needless to say, I could write a book on Darger, but instead suffice it to say that I was thrilled when I got a chance to stand there and gaze into that man's life, musing all the while about the objects he'd chosen to surround himself with. I especially liked seeing the framed newspaper article that hung on one of the walls, multiple images of a dark black tornado leaping from the page. Tornadoes and other wild weather appears frequently in Henry's work and I find myself strongly drawn to those images in particular.
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Henry turned out volumes and volumes of writing during his lifetime, and if the little bit I've read is indicative, the text is mostly tedious, rambling and obscure. But for me, seeing his typewriter was electric. The experience that is, not the typewriter.
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Mac and I enjoyed wandering around the Center and seeing the other two excellent exhibits that were on display. I was on fire with creative energy by the time I walked out the door.
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We headed on out of town, stopping at the Ellwood estate in DeKalb, a place that looked interesting and like it might provide a nice walk before dark. I found a bottle that had a label on it that read, "Drink Me!" so I did. That was shortly before they kicked me out of the house tour, but Mac managed to snap a picture before they ran me off the porch. .
After a few turns around the city of DeKalb we decided to stop for some dinner and thoroughly enjoyed the place that was recommended by a friendly passer-by. After dinner, we drove on to Iowa City before stopping for the night - that way we'd have a reasonable drive to Des Moines the next day and would arrive fresh and ready to dish out plenty of attitude at the quilt show.
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