Not the new and glitzy Millennium Park in Chicago, but rather the much smaller park by the same name in Michigan City, Indiana, 38 miles as the boat floats eastward across Lake Michigan. The Millennium Park shown above is located on the right bank of Trail Creek just before it flows into the lake. This is the second of three drawings done in response to Connie Kassal's suggestion that a number of area artists create three works of art linked to three days in summer: June 15, July 15 and August 15. Millennium Park is the drawing for July 15, a day on which my wife Rose and I serendipitiously participated in a Sunset Cruise sponsored by Catholic Charities.

I had first learned about the Sunset Cruise when I spotted a notice posted on the front window of Dockside Cafe, located at the Michigan City Marina. Rose and I have a half dozen favorite cafes located within 8 to 14 miles round trip from our home in Long Beach. Two or three days a week during the summer, we bike to one of them for coffee and rolls. The same bakery seems to supply all the cafes. My roll-of-choice is an almond croissant. Almonds supposedly are good for your health, so that offers me an excuse to select that as a breakast treat. As for the coffee, one of the other cafes sometimes offers a coffee from Kenya. If I drink enough Kenyan coffee, it should make me a faster runner. Right?

The Sunset Cruise on that chosen day seemed ideally suited for identifying my next art project. Tickets were $60 each, a bargain considering that the price included drinks plus a buffet dinner at Bridges, a small restaurant upstream from Millennium Park. The bridges in question are the high, swooping bridge on US 12 near Blue Chip Casino and the swinging railroad bridge that opens every hour or so when an Amtrak train passes, a special treat if you choose the right time to dine with grandkids, as we often do. Nearly a hundred people participated. Once wined and dined, we boarded boats and headed out onto the lake. We were miscellaneously assigned to different boats. Fortunately, we got to ride with friends David and Lisa Albers in their speedboat. With David at the helm, we powered north along the lakefront past our home in Long Beach and up to the edge of New Buffalo, Michigan. Then we returned south and hovered for a while near Mount Baldy and the harbor entrance so we could see the sun setting before returning to the dock. Not only was the Sunset Cruise fun, but it raised money for a good cause. We hope to do it again.

I brought along my sketchbook and digital camera, but felt self-conscious about sketching in front of a hundred people. And during the boat ride itself, it was too bumpy skipping across the waves at 20 mph to take pen to paper. But cruising slowly to the lake, I saw Millennium Park from a vantage point that most non-boaters don't have. There was my inspiration for a July 15 drawing similar in style to my Chicago Skyline drawing from a month before. I returned the next day with my sketchbook to a dock across the stream from Memorial Park and behind a building owned by the Department of National Resources. A DNR officer noticed me about to climb over a chain marked with a No Trespassing sign and wondered what I was doing. I convinced him that I was an artist, not a terrorist, and that I would remain no more than a half hour. The sketch above right is one I did preliminary to the final drawing at the top of this screen.

As with the Chicago Skyline art, the Millennium Park drawing is black ink on white illustration board. In addition to the original black & white drawing, which measures approximately 30 inches wide by 10 inches deep, I also have commissioned a number of limited-edition prints, which are now available for sale. I plan to exhibit the original art in Connie's show-to-be-announced. With the June 15 and July 15 drawings now finished, I next plan to work on my August 15 offering. That date is now past, and I already have chosen my subject: a vew of boats at anchor at the Michigan City Marina, just to the northeast of Dockside Cafe.