Jazz and art at the Chicago Cultural Center

So today we decided to take a trip to downtown. Livia has kind of fallen into a rut, as her routine takes her primarily to and from work, church, and the occasional game night with friends. I take the train everyday to the downtown area, since that's where I have classes and work. I also get free train and bus rides with my student u-pass, but Livia has to pay every time, which can add up. But today we decided to take the train ride.

Every Tuesday there is a jazz venue that gives free afternoon concerts. The venue is actually part of the Chicago Cultural Center, so each day it hosts concerts of some sorts. Mondays, for example is chamber orchestra music, and Tuesdays are jazz days. We enjoyed some pretty tight latin jazz by a dynamic trio.



After listening to the music, we toured some art exhibits. Some of the stuff was a bit too "contemporary" for my tastes, but the exposure was nonetheless appreciated. I wanted to take some pictures of us, but a burly uniformed female quite effectively discouraged us from interior photography--even though I wasn't going to use a flash. I guess that just shows how little class we have when it comes to artistic protocol.

We did notice that there were no security guards in the third exhibit, so we snuck in a few snapshots....

Livia striking a "blue steel" pose

Across the street, in Millennium Park, is what is called the "Museum of modern ice" or something. A talented Canadian is displaying some of his handiwork there. These are not ice sculptures, but actually ice paintings.







He broke up huge chunks of ice and dyed the pieces different colors. Then he placed the different pieces in a very large tray and filled it with water, so that when the water froze, then the pieces froze in a sort of ice-mosaic. Quite interesting. It's kept refrigerated by a bunch of metal rods that have coolant flowing through them. A cool thing is that each day as the sun melts the ice and the nighttime colds and winds refreeze it, the paintings morph diurnally. So what I saw last week is a little bit different than what we saw today.







And The Bean was covered with snow, since last night we had another dusting.