Chicago Art Institute South Garden
April 2003
Photograph
8" x 10"

Minimum Bid: $250

Jane Amidon

Bio: Jane Amidon is the principal of Amidon Design Communication, a small design, research, and writing practice with an interest in the intersection of natural and urban systems. She is the author of Moving Horizon: The Landscape Architecture of Kathryn Gustafson and Partners (2005), Radical Landscapes(2001), Dan Kiley: America's Master Landscape Architect (1999) and is the series editor for the Source Books in Landscape Architecture (books one through four include MVVA: Allegheny Riverfront Park, Ken Smith: Three Urban Projects, Peter Walker and Partners: Nasher Sculpture Center Garden, and Jones & Jones: ILARIS Regional Aesthetics in Community Design.). Recent design projects include an award-winning, collaborative proposal for an 80-acre brownfield redevelopment and the site design for a business incubator located within a wet forest zone. Jane currently teaches in the landscape section of the Knowlton School of Architecture.

Artist Statement: Chicago Art Institute South Garden. Designed by Dan Kiley, 1962. Kiley's work is often discussed as a dynamic of structural elements and spatial volume. But seasonal textures and the interplay of light and shadow revealed against the armature of geometry are equally essential aspects of his life-long fascination with capturing the sensation of a walk in the woods. In early spring at the Chicago Art Institute South Garden, hawthornes cast intricate shadows onto the bold simplicity of the grid. The dialog between space and structure is made more resonant by Kiley's superb sense of scale: because the height of the plant boxes is nearly equal to the sidewalk that frames the site, one reads the sunken garden as a spatial volume carved from the city.