Built in the early 1970s, The Freeark House was designed by John Vinci and Lawrence Kenny.  It is a boxy house with a glass front and back.  The sides are brick and the front facade is almost entirely glass.  If you squint (or need a description in a pinch), it’s kind of like Cameron’s house in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  Kind of.

I have always liked the way The Freeark House looks and its very clean lines, but didn’t think that it was something I could shoot.  The reason I say that is because there are two places to shoot the house from the outside.  Straight on and slightly off to the right.  If you’re shooting during the summer, it becomes even more difficult because the leaves of the trees surrounding it do a pretty good job of blocking the view.  Best case scenario, my shot would be unoriginal, worst case scenario, you wouldn’t see the house.  So I decided not to shoot it.

Then I went out for drinks with Dan Murphy.

Dan is the president of the Olmsted Society, a group designed to help preserve and continue the legacy of Riverside.  He asked if I’d considered shooting The Freeark House for my series.  I explained my reservations to him and he responded by saying, “So why don’t you shoot from inside the house looking out?”

It was something I’d never considered, mostly because who asks for access to shoot a home with one of the most unique home exteriors in the city and then doesn’t shoot the exterior?  Somehow though, I liked the thought.  Dan and I approached Kim Freeark (seen on the sofa) and she readily agreed to the concept.

Kim has a mannequin, Ruth, that is named after her mother, that she keeps in the window and dresses for whatever occasion is timely.  Bathing suit in the summer, Bears jersey during football season, cap and gown for graduation etc.  For this shoot, we put her in the closest thing Kim had to a red dress and went from there!

The funniest moment of the shoot came when it dawned on me about halfway through the shoot that the orange painting on the wall wasn’t an abstract painting, but rather, a collection of different figures having sex.  You think it’s an abstract painting.  It’s not an abstract painting.