The Great Lakes Cycle

A MULTIFACETED PROJECT BY ALEXIS ROCKMAN EXPLORES THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF THE GREAT LAKES.

The Great Lakes hang pendulously on the map forming a large part of the border between the U.S. and Canada. For most of us, they are things of beauty, places for recreation and the highways for ocean going ships to reach the interior of the country. We know they drain over Niagara Falls into Lake Ontario and eventually to the Atlantic Ocean.

In the early 1970s when I was living in Buffalo, New York, we knew many of the nearby Lake Erie beaches were contaminated and we could see some of the sources in the steel mills south of the city. A friend purchased passage for six people at a PBS auction and we all boarded a working freighter in Lackawanna to sail across Lakes Erie, Lake Huron and Lake Michigan— dropping off limestone, picking up coal. We saw areas of pristine beauty, mansions at Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and docked finally in Cleveland where oil slicked debris on the Cuyahoga River had caught fire in 1969.

Alexis Rockman is an environmentalist and painter who has completed five canvases measuring 6 by 12 feet, documenting the extraordinary interrelationships in the ecosystem of the lakes. The Great Lakes Cycle, which is traveling to museums along the lakes, is at the Chicago Cultural Center through October 1.