BRIDGEPORT — So Donald Trump and Rod Blagojevich are hanging out on the fifth floor of the Bridgeport Art Center...
No, that's not the start of a bad Chicago politics joke. That's art.
If you stroll by the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Chicago Ceramic Center's inaugural art gallery, "Political Clay," you'll catch a glimpse of two clay art pieces based on the billionaire presidential hopeful and the corrupt former Illinois governor now serving out a 14-year prison sentence.
The works are by David Trost, a Chicago-based artist and teacher at Lillstreet Art Center in Ravenswood, where he became fascinated by the connection between celebrity culture and politics. Known for his cartoonish hair and fantastical political missteps, Blago was the perfect subject.
He first crafted a four-foot sculpture of Blagojevich in the lead-up to the governor's impeachment.
Not long after Trost finished the sculpture, Blagojevich dropped his daughter off at a birthday party at the Lillstreet Art Center. A coworker ran upstairs and told Trost, “You wouldn’t believe who was just here.”
“Ah!” Trost remembers saying, “I just missed him.” But that didn’t stop him from trying to get the sculpture in front of the governor.
Trost carried the sculpture downstairs and waited by the front doors for two hours until Blagojevich returned to pick up his daughter.
The 38-year-old artist greeted the governor and invited him up to the studio: “I would love to hear your opinion,” he said, excited to see his subject in the flesh.
Blagojevich — now sporting an untamed, less political mane — agreed.
“Does it look like daddy?” Blagojevich asked his daughter.
The answer was the equivalent of “kinda,” said Trost, who asked Blagojevich to sign the piece.
“To Dave,” the governor wrote. “You’re the Michelangelo of the Ravenswood neighborhood.”
Signed: “Rod Blagojevich.”
“He was nice about it,” Trost said.
You can check out Trost’s other piece — a ceramic portrait of Donald Trump, complete his own caricatured hair — at the Chicago Ceramic Center, 1200 W. 35th St., open from 11- 6 p.m. on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays. His work joins a collection of 30 pieces by 10 artists.
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