The brilliant sculptor, Nancy Rubins, is in town from L.A. installing her mind-boggling, gravity defying, big sculpture on the front lawn of Navy Pier, comprised out of something in the neighborhood of 30 discarded canoes.
Every canoe is placed to play off the other canoes, and the environment, space and cityscape. This isn't the kind of art that an artist can have installed in absentia. Important decisions are made every moment to get the art the way Rubins wants it, so that when we look at it we just marvel at the impossibility. 
Joesph Tabet is the Producer of Big Art @ Navy Pier, a wonderful Free exhibit of, just that, Big Art. He deserves our thanks for the vision of bringing Nancy Rubins' sculpture to town where it plays off of and romps with a large Roy Lichenstein sculpture of paint brushes and a bright, orange, yet somber, elegant sculpture by Sir Anthony Caro.
The Caro and the Lichtenstein have been in place for a number of weeks, but now is an opportune time to go watch canoes being levitated and to then return to see how Rubins' piece looks completed.
More large scale art will be added during the coming weeks, constituting more opportunities to see and understand how artists work and compose their pieces, as well as the order and and installation logistics necessary to pull off the magic.
Synergies abound.The Lichtenstein at Navy Pier complements the Lichtenstein retrospective at the Art Institute. The entirety of large-scale Navy Pier art resonates with Jessica Stockholder's Color Jam triumph in the Loop at State & Adams. This summer is a particularly good time for art in Chicago.
I'm going back out.
Thank you,
Paul Klein
wow - a Nancy Rubins here in town. That is good news!
And to see how it is erected will be really interesting. Have they finished yet? Looks close...
That's why I sent out the ArtLetter today instead of tomorrow. I shot the pictures yesterday, which, I believe, was the 4th day of the install. I think there are a few days left. Nancy is in town until the 20th, but likely the piece will be finished earlier.