Tony Fitzpatrick
American, 1958-2025
The Switching Yard
INV-2129
Tony Fitzpatrick
American, 1958-20251999
The Switching Yard
Tony Fitzpatrick American, 1958-2025 →etchingpaper
Date
1999
Medium
Etching with aquatint in black on cream wove paper
Dimensions
Image: 14 × 12 cm (5 9/16 × 4 3/4 in.); Plate: 15.1 × 12.5 cm (6 × 4 15/16 in.); Sheet: 25.7 × 23 cm (10 1/8 × 9 1/16 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Gift of Mickey Cartin in honor of the artist
Chicago native Tony Fitzpatrick is both an artist and a poet. He has been a fixture of the Chicago-area art scene since the 1980s, and in 2009 was proclaimed by Newcity as the “best iconic Chicago personality now that Studs [Terkel] is gone.” Prints illustrating his poem Bum Town amply demonstrate Fitzpatrick's reflections on his beloved hometown in word and image. This book-length poem, published in 2001, is a gritty homage to his father and the disappearing Chicago of his own youth. Fitzpatrick’s verse recounts memories of driving around Chicago in his father’s Oldsmobile as together they listened to a White Sox baseball game on the radio. The duo wind their way through the city’s streets, recalling various now-long-gone landmarks on their way to return the ghost of Fitzpatrick’s uncle, who died as a child, to his resting place in Mount Olivet Cemetery.
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