The black and whites generally
measure 6 feet tall by 2 feet wide
and are black abstractions on a
white background. Some black
and whites are black and red.
Gretchen Travers projects: SEARS TOWER SHOW Travers Sear’s Tower show consisted of Travers works on two lobby levels; one level was a grouping of red and black paintings from her Michigan Avenue work, behind glass with Travers writings on the glass to give another dimension to the work. Another level had a series of her other work. In addition, 6 large pieces were especially created for the Sears Tower show: these consisted of 12’ x 2’ foot tall black and white very dynamic pieces which became part of the Sears Tower art collection. It was an extraordinary show seen by over a million visitors to the Tower, in addition to the thousands of people working in the Sears Tower building. Oak Street Public Studio The idea for this project came from David Griffith, then working at Prudential Realty, who visited Travers one day at here the Michigan Avenue Windows location. David introduced him self and said that if she ever wanted to do another project like the Michigan Avenue that she should call him because he had some ideas. Impressed by the huge impact her Michigan Avenue show had had on the public, he had the idea that she should have a store front in a prominent area open to the public so that the public could get a closer to art by being able to talk with the artist and see some of the process. Griffith knew of a vacant space on Oak Street, Chicago’s premier shopping street, considered the Rodeo Drive of the Midwest. Lee and Marilyn Miglin who were in the process of buying the building, were thrilled with the idea. With the help of Chicago architect Greg Williams, the space was redesigned, re-carpeted and took on a comfortable feel. People from around the world visited and Travers Public Studio became a meeting place for the neighborhood. Some people came for painting lessons including Marilyn Miglin and Judy Neidemeyer . A sign on the front window invited people in to have a cup of coffee and talk if they wished or just watch. The sign also said that because art reflects the world around us, the paintings would be different because they had visited. I want to add a sentence or two about how different this made the street, and how the attention to our need to create and be inspired, and our involvement in that need changed the street. --and something about the windows Michigan Avenue Windows When Travers started to put up an exhibit of her large scale paintings in the windows of the previous Saks Fifth Avenue block long building on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, people told her it wasn’t possible. They said it was one of the 20 busiest shopping streets in the world and it could simply not show art. But it did. For four months, nearly a full city block long, the paintings were lit 24 hours a day. It provoked all sorts of reactions, galvanized discussions and people who saw the show still remember it so well, some 15 years later. For Travers, the idea for the show was a kind of instinctual epiphany : She said, she lived with the paintings and their inherent ideas every day alone in the studio. After a long time it occurred to her in some simplistic sense of convoluted logic that the paintings belonged on the outside of a building instead of inside hidden away and unseen. At that point, she remembered the then vacated Saks building in the heart of Chicago’s ‘Miracle Mile’ and called the building owners, the Brookfield Development Corporation. While she got a lot of “no’s” first, she finally got to Glenn Azuma, a man with his own vision and love of art who cut her off mid-pitch saying “you don’t have to sell me, it’s a great idea, let’s do it.” Travers had a signed contract the next morning. Travers says “It’s like the key maker says in Matrix after their exit path is cut off: “There is always another way.” * the projects section will be expanded soon to include work from each show,
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© 2007 Gretchen Travers
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