A few years ago, Jan Tichy was invited by the art department at Indiana University Northwest in Gary to create a site-specific work. Tichy, an assistant professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago known largely for his video projections that intersect with architecture, was shown several sites, including Gary’s abandoned and moldering Union Station. Tichy was intrigued by the possibilities but ultimately felt that the idea didn’t make sense. “The last thing this city needs,” he recalls thinking, “is a projection.”
During a tour of Gary with Tichy in August, he instructed me to turn my car down an alley where an overgrowth of brush and weeds swept against one side of the car. We came upon the back of a tile and carpet store that’s missing a door along with a chunk of wall. Hundreds of boxes of ceramic tiles were strewn about the dim and damp cavernous building along with trashed shelving and displays. The city had given Tichy permission to enter, with care, and take any materials he needed. Since we didn’t bring dust masks, the visit was short. Tichy was on a mission to get more of a particular shape of tile and somehow, in a massive pile of mildewy rubble, he found a sheet of what he needed and let out a joyous yelp. Tichy would use the tiles to make embossed prints as part of a fund-raiser for the HLWP. Later he would show me how the scalloped edges of the tile referenced waves—a feature present in heat, light, and water.
In considering how to use light to help the public in a more meaningful way than a temporary installation, Tichy invited Chicago artists David Allan Rueter and Marissa Lee Benedict to join HLWP to plan an inaugural project called Gary Streetlights. The artists will work with Gary residents, beginning in the neighborhood adjacent to Washington Park on the south side, where none of the streetlights on the perimeter of the park are functioning. The goal is to make custom streetlights that residents can control and that will provide light in public spaces where it’s needed most.
Tichy hopes HLWP can begin operating out of the Heat, Light & Water Building by next spring. Until then the project has been using the field house at Borman Park near downtown as its headquarters. Tichy met with officials in the Gary Parks Department, who told him they were in dire need of any sort of programming he could offer. They had plenty of buildings but no funds to operate them or provide classes of any kind. In addition to photography and radio workshops, HLWP held several community meetings so that residents could tell them what kinds of workshops they wanted to see offered.
ArtHouse: A Social Kitchen, led by artist and urban planner Theaster Gates, who is also director of the University of Chicago’s Arts + Public Life initiative, will transform an underused space in downtown Gary into a culinary training center and cafe. It’s currently home to Mama Pearl’s BBQ on Fifth Avenue, the primary east-west artery of the city, across from U.S. Steel Yard ballpark. The project is a welcome idea, not least because the dining options in the area are limited to a McDonald’s and a takeout Chinese joint; residents will also have more chance to acquire valuable job skills.
“The building challenges us designwise. It really asks us to think differently,” says Isis Ferguson, program manager at Place Lab and part of the ArtHouse project leadership. “How do you make something that looks uninteresting appealing?”
