Lakefront Anonymous Book Release and Photo Exhibit Extended to Nov. 20 and 21

Lakefront Anonymous book cover

Join Aron Packer and me to help celebrate publication of Lakefront Anonymous: Chicago’s Unknown Art Gallery, our book about the thousands of vernacular stone carvings that line much of the city’s shoreline. We’ll be signing books as well as exhibiting some of the best images and giving talks about these magnificent works of art Saturday November 20 and Sunday November 21, 12-5 p.m., at 1100 Florence, Evanston. Talks at 2 p.m. each day.

Aron and I have been discovering and documenting the carvings for decades, even tracking down a few of the carvers. The carvings, ranging from minimalist initials to portraits and large-scale mythological scenes, represent a sort of spontaneous social history of Chicago at play, an anonymous monument to the city’s people and their lives at the lake. They stretch from the Indiana state line up to Osterman Beach on the North Side. All together they represent a stunning collective art environment, yet they usually go unnoticed and unrecognized, in part because they were created by ordinary people who remain almost entirely unknown.

If you’re in a hurry, you can order a copy of the book here.

Read more about the carvings here.

3 comments

  1. Is there more specific TIME for the organized lecture? Assuming, of course, that there IS an organized lecture.

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