Friday, August 9, 2013

Last Year's Crop

Church Series

May & June 2012









Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Appetite for Destruction





Appetites for Destruction


It was with great gusto that fans destroyed this multi-media wall relief Saturday.

Many thanks to the folks at Fulton St. Collective, Koval Distillery, Finch’s Brewery

And ESPECIALLY the team of Lion v. Gorilla. An artist statement follows


The Christening of the AD
























Jon Bollo


The Christening of the AD


Pine, Spruce, Found Object, Photographs, Graphite, Ink


2013



Christened in 1951, the Italian Trans-Atlantic liner the Andrea Doria sailed back and forth between Genoa and New York from 1953 to 1956. The Doria’s deck map hung in the sunroom of my grandparents Alton, IL home, almost from that time to the late 1990s. A small pencil square surrounded one of the cabins, a small ‘x’ beside it.


On the 26th of July, 1956 the Swedish vessel the SS Stockholm, in heavy fog, collided with the Andrea Doria, killing 51 people instantly. A young girl dropped by her father into a lifeboat made the death toll 52. Her hospital struggle was front page news in every American newspaper as she hung on for a couple days. While the sinking, which took hours longer than expected, was considered the greatest sea rescue of all time (due to new technologies and it’s proximity to a French ocean liner and the US Coast Guard based out of New York) it was nevertheless the second worst maritime disaster in US waters [second only to the Eastland right here on Clark Street 41 years prior, almost to the day].


The x on my grandparent’s deck map represented the point of impact, the square the cabin they had booked. My father, grandmother, and grandfather were to be in that cabin that night, but my father got sick on Italian food and they opted to stay till he was better and fly home. His stomach troubles wound up saving the lives of his family. Their cabin was ripped apart along with ones above and below all the way to the keel causing 98% of the fatalities. One girl in a neighboring cabin was miraculously flung from her bed to the bow of the Stockholm surviving with only minor injuries.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

You Are Beautiful

It was great to see these again. Congrats You-Are-Beautiful for 10 years of making hearts change.







Thanks to Matt Hoffman and the thousands of artists and activists worldwide.
Photography © Marcia M. Bollo 2013

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Winter Mosaic, Highland Park

Having won the public art bid, the creative team of Jon Bollo and Casey Van Loon completed this piece for Highland Park. It is up until March or May. Thank you for checking it out on line and in person.  It & four other fabulous pieces are in the 650 block of Central Ave. Highland Park, IL 60035