Artist pieces damaged Naperville sculpture back together
It took just seconds last summer for a driver's mistake to heavily damage a sculpture wall outside Nichols Library in downtown Naperville.
It has taken months for an artist to repair the damage from the crash, carefully rebuilding the piece called "Man's Search for Knowledge Through the Ages" so it once again portrays the amassed learning of humankind.
Orland Park artist Dodie Mondero is putting the finishing touches on his effort to reassemble the 50-foot-long, 7-foot-tall wall of bricks at the northeast corner of the library parking lot at Jefferson Avenue and Webster Street.
The work has challenged his precision as an artist and his patience as a worker. He's replaced each piece - and re-created some missing ones - to renew the sculpture originally created in 1987 by Seattle artist Mara Smith.
"This is probably one of my toughest projects," said Mondero, who has completed other downtown Naperville artwork including the "Pillars of the Community" mural at Chicago Avenue and Main Street and parts of the "Naperville Loves a Parade" mural in an alley west of Main Street. "It's basically putting Humpty Dumpty together again like a big puzzle."
The public art nonprofit group Century Walk Corp. hired Mondero, who was named its public art curator in 2015, to complete the rebuild beginning in March, said Brand Bobosky, Century Walk chairman.
Fixes were necessary after an 81-year-old driver accidentally accelerated into the sculpture last July while in the library parking lot.
The force of the crash knocked down a section of bricks about 4 feet wide and 5 feet tall from the center of the wall and damaged its structural integrity, even though the wall is three bricks thick and reinforced with wire and concrete.
"It was quite devastating," Bobosky said.
It cost $42,000 to install the sculpture 30 years ago, Bobosky said. But to make the repairs this year, it's costing roughly $50,000. "It's an accomplishment, I think, to repair it almost more than to build it," Bobosky said.
Working behind a tarp and under a tent, Mondero uses a tile cutter to adjust the shape of each salvaged brick to make sure it will fit in its proper place on the sculpture wall.
The images he's putting back together show the sea to represent the beginning of time, open books and the tree of knowledge to represent learning, as well as mathematical equations, music, architecture, literature, dancers, a space station and the universe.
Once each brick is sized to the proper shape, Mondero applies a gluelike liquid cement to hold it in place. He later uses another sticky substance made by a special effects company to match the coloring of the mortar still from the sculpture's 1987 beginnings.
"I'm going to go through every inch of it and make sure it looks good," he said.
Tuesday morning was likely to be his third-to-last day of work. On Wednesday, Mondero said he plans to finish replacing all of the damaged bricks. Then he'll spend one other day cleaning the artwork, pulling weeds and powerwashing the brown brick wall, which curves away from the corner of Jefferson and Webster streets.
Bobosky said once Mondero's work wraps up, he intends to plan a rededication ceremony for the sculpture and welcome it again into Naperville's gallery of public art.