Of Louis Sullivan and Swedish Fish

I had Friday on my vacation calendar at work for the last couple of months.  My original plan to fall from the sky fell through, and instead of showing up at work, I chose to take a mental health day and head downtown to bond with Chicago and cross a few things off of my perpetual list of things I want to do in the city.

I was the only person on my car on the train for a couple of stops.  While taking this photo, a woman walked into the car, sat down three rows ahead of me, gave me a look like she clearly thought I was a moron for staging photos of my train ticket.  Then she did her hair and makeup on the train.  Because that's so much more dignified.

Upon arrival at the station, I had a little bit of time to kill before Dano was sprung from workin' on the railroad to join me on my city frolic, so I headed to a cafe and phoned my Palindromic friend, who took a morning break to have a cup of coffee with me. 

In addition to coffee, I grabbed a chocolate croissant, the pain au chocolat that was my breakfast every single day that I spent in Paris.  The chocolate was not dark enough, but the memory was sufficiently sweet.

I met up with Dano, and we took a short walk to the big eyeball.

The eye is Tony Tasset's Eye, and it was just installed.  My primary objective for seeing it was to get this photo:

Yeah, he's looking at you.

From there, we strolled towards the Chicago Cultural Center, stopping occasionally to play with one of my camera lenses.

The Chicago Cultural Center is a fun building, with an Art-O-Mat machine that reminds me of my friend Bombadee's Tiny Drawing a Day project on Facebook. 

But the building is probably more famous for housing the world's largest Tiffany dome.

We explored a couple of other rooms, and took advantage of the lighted floors in the Grand Army of the Republic Rotunda to highlight our Vibram 5Fingers footwear.

And then we watched a ballerina do the space far more justice as part of her own photo shoot.

What brought us to the Center on Friday was an exhibit called Sullivan's Idea, featuring architect Louis Sullivan, who is (against his own wishes, we learned) called the "father of modernism".

Many parts of the exhibit dealt with Sullivan's extensive use of architectural terra cotta, with much of the final product coming from sculptor Kristian Schneider and the American Terra Cotta Tile and Ceramic Company in Crystal Lake, IL.

Sullivan used a lot of organic and botanical themes in his work, and was an avid rose gardener and photographer.  This wall made me think of my father's roses and my mother's Rose of the Day twitpic.

This model of the Chicago Stock Exchange was constructed from the prints themselves, and was gorgeous.

After the Sullivan exhibit, we jumped on the L to Lincoln Park and made a quick stop at The Counter for custom burgers.  Mine featured smoked provolone and garlic aioli and so many vegetables that it was 2' tall and I couldn't fit it in my mouth without unhinging my jaw.  Dano had a turkey burger with sprouts, spring greens, feta cheese, and a vinaigrette.  We had sweet potato fries with some kind of dipping sauce that neither of us can identify, and their website is down at the time I'm writing this (and linking to them . . . ) so I'm going to go with my original instinct that it was some kind of chipotle mayo.

We rushed from lunch to Landmark Century Centre for a screening of the new Julianne Moore/Annette Bening movie, The Kids Are All Right, which was released that day to a limited number of theaters.  If you have one of those theaters anywhere near you, go see it.  Amazing.  In addition to being a refreshingly honest and not emotionally manipulative movie, it gave me my new favorite non-curse curse, which I won't spoil here because it's so much better when I say it out loud.  Oh my stinkin' heck, you guys are going to love it.

Also?  Landmark has these:

ASSORTED flavor, bitches.  My last trip to IKEA was a crushing disappointment when they were out of the Assorted and only had the Original.  Now, my movie theater assortment only contained 5 fish that weren't red, but it's still better than nothing.  I love Swedish Fish more than should be allowed by law.

We flew out of the theater and raced back to the station to make the (immensely entertaining) train ride home.  Overall, an amazing day!