Bridging the Gap Between Hotel and Nature August 18, 2010

Bridging the Gap Between Hotel and Nature
When you walk by the Seneca Hotel & Suites on East Chestnut, you can’t help but notice its location. Tucked away in the heart of the Gold Coast, the distinctive boutique hotel is just a block off Michigan Avenue, neighboring four star restaurants, shops galore and internationally renowned museums. But pay close attention and you will notice what appears to be a figure growing out of the Seneca’s front garden that is doing a backbend. Confused? Don’t be. What you’re looking at is a sculpture created by local artist Jennifer Dickson entitled appropriately The Bridge.
Last year, Dickson was one of 20 artists selected to display her work at Chicago’s Annual Lakefront Sculpture Exhibition, which showcases outdoor art throughout the Lincoln Park and Lakeview neighborhoods for a one year time period. The Bridge is a fiberglass fabricated figurative piece with a welded iron frame designed to resemble a plant form.
“The idea came from thinking about the disconnect between man and nature and having a desire to counter that train of thought in a way that could be understood visually rather than just logically through language,” explained Dickson.

The lines in the form are inspired by plant movement more than human form, and the feet and hands are sculpted in a way to make them look as though they are rooted to the ground. She named it The Bridge not only because of its bridge-like form, but to serve as a model that bridges the gap between man and nature. So striking is The Bridge, it caught the eye of one local business that wanted the sculpture displayed in their neck of the woods.
“I always noticed it when I would walk through Lincoln Park and I just loved it,” said Senior Vice President IRMCO Properties & Management Corp David Sherman. “I called Jennifer and told her how I’d love to display it out front. Since we put it there, it’s been the talk of the neighborhood.”
Sherman says it enhances the outdoor space and bridges the gap, quite literally, between the cold concrete and the surrounding greenery. Dickson’s piece directly engages the viewer physically, mentally and emotionally by creating new places within the everyday landscape that challenges someone’s traditional experience of space. She said “Rooting it to the ground puts the form in the same space as the viewer..”
Dickson said she was also deeply inspired by old Irish myths and legends that were read to her as a child. “In the back of my head there are fairies and spirits all over, or at least I’d like there to be.” Her nondescript human figure is a childish desire to create that illusion.
The interior is composed of a welded iron frame reinforced with conduit. The exterior is cast fiberglass. Dickson then welded the armature and sculpted a clay form around that before coating the clay form in plaster to make an eight-part mold. Within those molds she cast the fiberglass.
This is the first time the Seneca Hotel has ever displayed a sculpture in its garden. Passerbyers can see The Bridge in the garden for at least the next six months or potentially longer. “We love her work so much that we may end up buying it,” said Sherman.
Dickson has been a working artist for ten years and formally worked for a company that built and designed architectural scale models for much of the major development that has happened in Chicago in the last 15 years. She plans on pursuing an MFA in graduate school and said she has always wanted to be an artist...or an astronaut ballerina.