Chicago’s Busiest Intersection Gets Colored Bright Green, Blue and Red by Jessica Stockholder

For artist Jessica Stockholder's latest piece, Color Jam, she covered Chicago's busiest intersection in colorful vinyl in the city's biggest public installation ever.

Stockholder, who's served as chair of the University of Chicago's visual arts department since 2011, unveiled her installation on June 5th. The colors will stay up all summer. In at interview with The New York Times she noted that her greatest challenge was creating something that would stand out in such a busy part of the city

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"I wanted to fill the intersection with color," she said. "To have a presence at this busy site that could withstand all the cars and trucks and people and at the same time interact with them."

Stockholder worked with colored commercial vinyl, the same stuff used for signage, to cover the four corners where State and Adam's Streets meet with huge pieces of red, green and blue. The colored vinyl covers everything, encompassing sidewalk and street as well as lampposts and buildings. According to Stockholder, she and her team used enough vinyl to print 50,000 records.

She refers to the installation as a "three-dimensional painting," and notes that the goal was to disrupt the natural flow of traffic through bustling Chicago intersection. Apparently, Stockholder has harbored visions of massive, disruptive installations for a while now.

"Part of me would like to make stuff that's minimal, and very well organized, and clean, and comprehensible," she said in a2005 interview with PBS. "But I love the chaos, that's why I do it."

The installation was commissioned by the Chicago Loop Alliance, who set up a webcam so the rest of us can experience Stockholder's work.

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via FastCompany