Thank You Chicago

On my way back to Trinidad (for Carnival), I took a detour through Chicago to visit my best friend and matron of honour, Kelley (so what if I forgot my winter coat in the mad rush to the airport and it's February?).

I decided I'd take a full day to sleep in and recover from my awesomely-bad jet-lag as Kelley and her husband went to work/school. I peeked outside my cozy bedroom window the morning after I landed and saw a thick blanket of snow covering the park, the trees wrapped in ice, and the balcony furniture, cars and park benches now plump white figures covered in fresh powder.
Good morning sleepy Illinois, it's 5am.
Somehow I had forgotten that jet-lag from East to West meant that I wake up at 4-5am on the US/Caribbean side of the planet; thank God they had great TV and a cute little pug named Stella that has personality for days and loves to cuddle.

Snow
Ice
Howling wind
Bundled up neighbors shuffling down the road walking their dogs
The morning papers abandoned on icy steps......

"Morning Shan! Here's a coat you can borrow incase you want to go for a walk later, okay? I'll be home around 7, call me if you need anything."

"Okay! Thanks Kell! Have a great day!" ....'Go for a walk?!'


On my second day I decided to see what Chicago's Art Institute had to offer. Kells and Jono only mentioned it half a dozen times since I've been threatening to visit them, perhaps it was something worth seeing.



Modern - Post-Modern Art Heaven





How had I forgotten that the short-list of paintings that I had not seen in my travels were all housed in this place?
Chicago was always one of those obscure cities my post-modern art professor brought up often that I never figured I'd find myself going to on an art-pilgrimage... not like my Venice Biennale art-Olympics, London and New York art crawls, and trips to France to see Monet's Giverny 'water-gardens'. Chicago was that place on that TV series that I stopped watching a few seasons ago and the city where Bill and Guiliana from E! lived part-time and filmed their reality show.

The Art Institute of Chicago is, hands down, the best modern / post-modern art museum I have ever visited, and the art snob that I am, I am not used to being blown away by a museums collection. It was a truly awe-inspiring seven hours, yes, seven hours.

Cassatt, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Pissarro, Gaugain, Touluse Lautrec, Seurat, Manet,

The best Claude Monet collection outside of Musee d'Orsay in Paris,

Rushca, Dumas, Le Witt, Nauman, Richter, Bourgeois, Flavin, Fischli, Weiss, Whistler, Sargent, Inness, Homer, Tanner, O'Keeffe, Hopper's "Night Hawks", Wood, Carrra, Albright, Munch, Pollock, Dekooning, Newman, Brown, Guston, Hesse, Serra, Stella, Hamilton, Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, Resenquist, Bacon, Gorky,

Who knew I could like Hockney?,

Matta, Leger, Arp, Miro, Dubuffet, Giacometti, Ernst, Ray, Magritte, DeChirico, ...

I spent the day clicking away at the audio guide trying to soak up every art-history anecdote it had to offer. I didn't make it through the whole gallery and after many hours I was asked to leave, the gallery was closed.. it had closed a while ago...

Amazing.

Amazing collection.

That night I had my first, authentic, Chicago pizza and I passed out around 8. I endured a good teasing as I crept up the stairs to bed and flaked out.

Sunday morning we had brunch at The James, went shopping with Kells and had a nice dinner at a beautiful French-Vietnamese restaurant. My time flew by thanks to my wonderful hosts.








It was home time already... but no big goodbyes as I'd be seeing Kells and Jono in a few days to party in the streets of Trinidad for Carnivallllllll !