Photo By Gail

You might have noticed that posts on the blog were a little on the thin side last week, because I was away vacationing with my sister in the lovely American city of Chicago. No one will argue that Chicago is a pretty happening place for a vacation, especially if you like to visit amazing sites, eat delicious food and suffer wildly unpredictable weather. In fact, due to last weeks’ extremely shitty inclement weather in “The Windy City,” we ended up doing a lot of “indoor activities” – including one afternoon spent wandering around aimlessly inside the massive Art Institute, Chicago, which is just insane.

If you’ve been to NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the two are very similar: huge and full of art. Of all the many paintings and other arty stuff that we saw, my favorite is this painting by Peter Blume (1906 – 1992) called The Rock. It has a little bit of an interesting back story: The Rock was originally commissioned in 1939 by the Edgar Kaufmann family for their Frank Lloyd Wright–designed home, Falling Water, located in Bear Run, Pennsylvania. The construction of Falling Water can be seen on the left side of the composition.

The painting has all kinds of crazy surreal details and it’s just super awesome. I wish I could afford to have this painting hanging on the walls of the Chickpad. If you ever find yourself in the Art Institute of Chicago, make sure you find this painting and spend some time looking at it. Then go down to the basement where they have this mind-blowing collection of period room miniatures that is just the shit. More fun posts about my rad trip to Chicago will show up on The Gig over the next week or so.