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NIPSCO's cooling tower dominates Michigan City's North End. As you wind past Mount Baldy driving into town on US 12 from the west, the cooling tower is the first structure you see. It is huge, 361 feet tall, so NIPSCO publicist Nate Gipson tells me. It hogs the horizon. Blots out the sky.The cooling tower can be seen from vantage points throughout Michigan City, Indiana, a town of 38,000 which sits near the bottom of Lake Michigan. If you approach town from the northeast on 12 along the Amtrak tracks, there is the tower to greet you. You can see it behind the decaying concrete structure that once served as an elevator supplying water for steam-powered locomotives. Come over the Trail Creek Bridge near the new casino, and the tower disappears temporarily, only to reappear larger than ever behind the cacophony of traffic signs pointing travelers to Gary, LaPorte and points south and west. Boaters on the lake and passengers on jet planes on final approaches to Chicago's O'Hare Field also have no trouble spotting Michigan City's most prominent industrial landmark.
Yet it is a landmark so large, so (in a word) ubiquitous that most Michigan City residents drive past the tower daily without seeing it. It's invisible to us. It is like living beside a noisy expressway, and after a while you no longer hear the traffic. My wife Rose was shopping recently at Lighthouse Place, the outlet mall that lures out-of-towners seeking shopping bargains literally into the shadow of the cooling tower. The tower stands across the street, kitty-corner from the mall's parking lot. A customer in one shop asked a clerk about the cooling tower.
"Is it a nuclear tower?" asked the customer.
The clerk couldn't provide an answer. She worked each day beside the cooling tower and didn't know its purpose!
An Environmental Error
Many residents and visitors to Michigan City consider the cooling tower ugly, an example of industrial blight. It is on the lakefront property of the Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO). The tower certainly can be branded an environmental error, the result of a dispute several decades ago between environmentalists and NIPSCO. The well-meaning, but perhaps misguided, environmentalists didn't want NIPSCO discharging hot water into the lake. This would raise water temperatures near the outlet a miniscule few degrees, thus changing the habitat for fish. Some locals believe NIPSCO erected the cooling tower as an act of environmental revenge: "If you don't want hot water, we'll give you something ugly that you'll have to look at the rest of your lives!"
That's unkind. Nate Gipson would take offense. Taken out of its industrial context, the cooling tower is not ugly. Its shape--first sloping inward, then sloping outward--is rather, well, graceful. It's a pleasant shape. A friendly shape, resembling the Gibson Girl corset of an earlier era. During the winter, large plumes of "smoke" bellow from the tower, but this discharge is steam: created when moist, hot air from the cooling water meets the dry, cold air circulating above. Caught in the setting sun, the cooling tower with its multi-colored clouds above might capture the imagination of a painter.
In my regular trips into town, I have lately come to regard the cooling tower as might a painter. I began to see the power plant as an icon, a symbol of my home town. I regarded the adjacent NIPSCO power plant with its block-shaped buildings topped with smokestacks not as an industrial complex, but as a blend of squares and rectangles, the stacks themselves forming tall, vertical lines that might have been captured from a canvas by Piet Mondrian. The power plant's cool colors intrigued me from an artist's perspective: yellows, oranges, ochres, browns that blended well together. Could not the power plant be a subject for a painting? I saw the plant painted in a style that might be called cubisitic impressionism, if such a term exists in the art critic's' lexicon.
Cubistic Impressionism
And so when Connie Kassal approached me with the invitation to do an exhibit of my paintings this winter at the Michigan City, Indiana City Hall, I considered as my first assignment capturing the power plant on canvas, not as an ugly industrial complex but rather as an exercise in matching cubes and colors. Cubistic impressionism: Have I founded a new school of art?
Connie Kassal is a well-known area artist. She also works with the Mayor's Council for Arts and Humanities, one of her duties being the selection of paintings and painters for exhibits at City Hall. She is a talented artist. I have one of Connie's paintings on the wall of our living room. It shows two women seated on a beach with lake and glowering clouds in the background. It is painted in various shades of blue, reminiscent of Pablo Picasso's early-century portrait of a musician bending over his guitar. Although Rose and I did not know it when we acquired the painting a decade or more ago, the painting was a self-portrait of Connie and her daughter.
Last summer, I participated in a weekly painting workship with Connie and other area artists at the Old School in Long Beach, a suburb of Michigan City. Many of my paintings are done in a Pop Art style, inspired by the work of the late Roy Lichtenstein. As an interesting exercise, I decided to use the basic design from Connie's painting of two women and draw them as might have Lichtenstein. The women became pyramids on a flat orange surface, a strip of blue representing the lake, the yellow background representing a sky lit by the setting son. The painting also owed some of its inspiration to a mammoth Lichtenstein work ("The Great Pyramid") that I had seen at the Des Moines Art Center in Des Moines, Iowa last winter.
"Pyramids."When I showed my painting to Connie, I asked if she recognized the sources. She wasn't familiar with the Lichtenstein work in Des Moines, so missed identifying that. Only when I brought her own canvas to the school and displayed it next to my new work, did she realize that the composition featuring two pyramids was identical to that featuring two women. In the field of comic art, when you copy the work of another cartoonist, it's sometimes called a "swipe." Or, more politely, it might be called an "homage." I told Connie that my painting was an homage both to her and Roy Lichtenstein.
Inspiration
Roy Lichtenstein is one reason why I'm painting today, although Bill Ziegler probably deserves more credit for bringing me back to the world of art. While I'm best known for my writing, particularly for Runner's World magazine, my original background was as an artist. I started as a cartoonist, earning spending money at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota selling gag cartoons to magazines such as This Week, True, Argosy and Popular Mechanics. I majored in art at Carleton and also included cartoon elements in some of my paintings--which wasn't always appreciated by my professors. This was in the 1950s, before anybody had heard of Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein.
I continued as a freelance cartoonist and illustrator after graduation, but found it difficult to make a living, so went to work as an editor for The Kiwanis Magazine in Chicago. That led me out of art and into journalism. Eventually I quit that job to work as a freelance writer. I've published 32 books and hundreds of magazine articles.
But I never totally turned my back on the art world, occasionally producing cartoons and paintings more for my own enjoyment than to earn a living. In 1991, Bill Ziegler, a cartoonist friend who drew the comic strip Mary Worth, suggested that I bringing a sketch pad with me on a trip to Ireland. I sketched Galway Bay, the Burren. That got me started again.
About the same time, I attended an exhibit of Pop Art paintings by Roy Lichtenstein at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Lichtenstein's work inspired me to do some similarly-styled painting featuring sharp, black lines and bright, primary colors. (Using unmixed colors right out of the tube, especially black, is considered a "no-no" by many art teachers.) It was the style of art my professors had frowned upon four decades ago, but given my background as a cartoonist, it seemed the way for me to go.
"Sheila."Not everybody--neither the public nor critics--appreciates Pop Art. Occasionally, I submit my worked to juried exhibits at local galleries, sometimes submitting Pop Art paintings with their characteristic "Ben Day" dots along with more traditional landscapes and still-lifes. Often it is the latter that get accepted into the exhibits. But Connie Kassal seemed to like the off-beat character of my work, particularly the bright colors, and invited me to exhibit my paintings during the months of January and February at City Hall. With ample time between the invitation and the exhibit, this offered me the opportunity to execute several special paintings featuring local scenes.
Industrial Icon
While many consider factories ugly--not something Renoir or Monet might immortalize--I decided to seek beauty in several of our industrial landmarks. I began with a painting of the power plant, including the cooling tower in the background, almost a throwaway image. Next, I captured the water works, then the railroad elevator on 12 matched with the cooling tower. I painted the cityscape seen from the bridge, this time with the cooling tower in a more dominant position. I also did a profile portrait of Mayor Sheila Brillson in the classic Lichtenstein "Ben Day" style. Finally, I created a takeoff on the popular South Shore Line poster featuring a flapper girl on the beach.
That poster has the title "The Dunes Beaches." I titled mine "The City Beaches" and used a logo for the Lake Shore Line, that being the name of the electric railroad before Samuel Insull acquired it in the 1920s and commissioned the posters. In keeping with the Pop Art theme of the exhibit, I also substituted the comic book character Wonder Woman for the flapper and featured items from other paintings in the background, including, of course, my ubiquitous cooling tower icon.
"Power Plant."I worried that a poster painting featuring Wonder Woman might be deemed "politically incorrect" hanging in the office of a female mayor. I also worried that Mayor Brillson, or others, might consider my paintings of industrial buildings ugly. No worry. When I dropped by City Hall several days after hanging the paintings to present a price list of the 33 paintings on exhibit, I encountered Her Honor. "Your paintings brighten the office," she said.
(I'd vote for Mayor Brillson in the next election for that endorsement, but as a resident of suburban Long Beach, I don't get to vote in city elections.)
A Style Its Own
Not all of the 33 paintings in the City Hall exhibit (which will continue through February 28, 1999) bear resemblance to the work of Roy Lichtenstein. Though I continue to bow in the late artist's direction, my more recent work has begun to develop, I think, a style of its own. That's certainly true of the power plant painting. It's also true of a painting of trees seen outside the window of our room at Winter Park when we visited that ski resort last winter.
"Winter Park."Continuing to follow the good advice of Bill Ziegler, I have continued to carry art equipment with me on trips, business and pleasure. On a trip through Colorado and into the Southwest last February, I brought my acrylic paints. I began with an impressionistic sketch of the snow-laden trees, refining it after I returned home into the more graphic painting seen in the exhibit
I gave several lectures on that trip in Des Moines, Iowa and in Denver and Boulder, Colorado. Cutting through the mountains, Rose and I continued to Green Valley Spa in St. George, Utah to fulfill a writing assignment for Runner's World. Finally, we spent ten days in Arizona, renting a house in Scotsdale that had on a shelf above the kitchen an arrangement of blankets, jars, plants and a cowboy hat. That too became a painting that is now part of the City Hall exhibit.
"Southwestern Scene."The Michigan City, Indiana City Hall does not offer your standard gallery experience. The paintings are located in four rooms within City Hall. The power plant is hung above the Mayor's computer on the wall behind her desk. The wall that she faces while seated at that desk would not easily welcome most paintings because of its brightly-colored wall paper. I chose for this wall the painting of the railroad elevator, because of its simplicity: an ochre horizon, a yellow sky dividing the canvas. The work of Mark Rothko was my inspiration here, although stylistically the painting is far removed from Rothko.
Unfortunately for art lovers (or power plant lovers), the Mayor's office is not accessible while she's working. Nor is the adjacent office of one of her assistants. It boasts three still-life paintings I created while taking a painting class with the Michigan City Art League in the fall of 1997. (Previously, they graced our kitchen wall.) In class, I did standard, semi-impressionistic paintings so as not to shock my instructor or fellow artists, then later at home converted several of them into more stylized renditions.
In the accompanying painting, the diagonal stripes on the wall definitely are an element borrowed from Lichtenstein. The orange is a Lichtenstein orange. The coffee urn, however, is all Higdon.
"Still Life # 3."Paintings in the outer office are more easily accessible by anyone visiting City Hall. This includes: Winter Park, Southwestern Scene, Sheila, The City Beaches and a painting of a basketball player in a red uniform that I titled "Chicago 23," because I didn't want Michael Jordan's agent asking for a rights fee. Gary LaPorte can be seen by those passing the office through the windowed door. If you the secretaries allow you to use their private bathroom, you'll pass a preliminary painting I did of the Michigan City Lighthouse to serve as a design for a stained glass window.
Also accessible to the public are 19 other paintings of various subjects hung in a circular conference room nearby. Several of these paintings are of runners, including Khalid Kannouchi, winner of the 1997 LaSalle Banks Chicago Marathon. Two paintings feature cross-country runners featuring shirts identifying them as running for "City," "Rogers" and "LaPorte."
Several other of my paintings will be on display this winter: at an exhibit of work by members of the Michigan City Art League at Basil's Restaurant at 521 Franklin Street and an exhibit of work by members of the Michigan City Area Artists at the John G. Blank Center for the Arts at 312 East 8th Street.
I don't know which way my art will take me following the exhibit The City Beaches, whether to more Pop Art painting, back to more traditional scenes or in a new direction. But I do know I will have fun with my once-abandoned art career.
