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View of one of the seven spires.

Alternate view of one of the seven spires.

View of all seven spires.

Seven Spires (2008)

Commissioned by the McCormick Center, Chicago.

Media: stainless steel.

Evan Lewis was commissioned to create a site-specific work of public sculpture for the billion-dollar expansion project at the McCormick Center in Chicago. The work entitled Seven Spires is a suite of seven pieces that are

mounted on the top of the south wall of the new complex. The prominent site faces the Stevenson Expressway making the sculptures highly visible to thousands of people every day.

Over four hundred artists were considered for the McCormick Place West Expansion project, making this commission a highly prestigious achievement for Lewis. The prominent site for this artwork brought a set of unique criteria to work with. The architects originally planned to install a series of flags on poles on the south-facing wall. Only later a decision was made to replace this concept with an original work of art. The mounts for the flagpoles were already in place when Lewis was asked to take up this daunting challenge.

Major concerns were given to the safety of the artwork, given its proximity to the busy expressway. Technical aspects such as wind load and ice load had to be carefully addressed. Lewis’s considerable experience as a public artist who fabricates his own work has enabled him to solve all these challenges and allowed him to propose a work of art that meets all the criteria.

Seven Spires is a suite of seven individual pieces that adorn the top of the south wall. Each sculpture is twenty four feet high with the artwork reaching up to forty feet above the ground. The spires are visually open and airy pieces entirely composed of stainless steel. The steel is burnished by hand to achieve a luminescent silky finish, a specialty of Lewis’s that pick up the colors of its surroundings and of the changing sky.

The sculptures have vertical helical elements that spiral up in the air in an elegant upsweep. Given the futuristic look of the spires it is hard to believe that the artwork was all produced completely by hand in the artist’s studio in Chicago. Evan Lewis likes to have full control over the entire process, starting with the concept and ending with the last finishing details. When necessary, Lewis created special tooling and armature to bend the stainless steel in the desired shapes.