Infrastructure #1

Last year I contributed an illustrated article to AREA Chicago, which is a free local newspaper that publishes a variety of articles with a strong activist bent.  Each issue has a particular theme.  The upcoming issue is "Infrastructure."  I'm sure many of the articles will focus on social and political infrastructure, but I hope they won't overlook good old-fashioned built environment, which is my special interest.  So I'm putting together a series of graphics which I'm going to offer for their use. 

For previous issues I submitted drawings I thought would showcase my work.  But a newspaper really isn't the best format for complex graphics.  What works are high contrast images which can be used to break up the text and illustrate broad themes.  So I'm trying to do that. Not my best work, but my best work suited to the medium.  Unfortunately this 1" x 10" format is not at all suited to Blogger.

The image above is taken from Lake Avenue west of the Loop. It's one of those streets that makes me hum the opening to "Taxi," with the elevated tracks overhead. I believe the equipment on the rooftop is for creating concrete mixes. But I may be wrong.