An alert from Rockford artist Emily Grobe got the ball rolling. Who knew that a little message embedded in a downtown Rockford street would open a black hole of rabbit holes for so many, including your Under Rocks team?
The colorful, license plate-sized linoleum tile is just outside a crosswalk on State Street. You might bend to scoop it up while rushing across the busy intersection before the WALK/DON'T WALK signal changes. But you can't. It's embedded in the blacktop, flush with the street. Thousands of cars have unwittingly sealed it in place, and thousands more will eventually wear its message away.
The phenomenon known as the Toynbee Tiles began in the 1980s in Philadelphia and spread to cities as far away as Chicago, Kansas City and even Chile. Just last year, one of these plaques showed up embedded in front of Rockford City Hall. Is it a manifesto? An art project? And who is behind it?
We turned to Steve Weinik, a photographer who grew up curious about the strange tiles embedded in roadways in his hometown of Philadelphia. He's also one of the researchers featured in the documentary "Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles." And he runs the website toynbeeidea.com. He calls the Toynbee Tiles "both a message and a medium."
While the Rockford tile features both the message and the medium, it's unlikely it was created by the original "tiler." The man Weinik suspects was the first to spread the "Toynbee idea" lives in Philadelphia and doesn't want to be found. The area with tiles confirmed to be his appears to be shrinking as he grows older.
Now, when tiles pop up in places far from Philadelphia, such as Rockford, they're presumed to be the work of copycats, making them art projects rather than calls for an afterlife on Jupiter. In fact, there's evidence that many of today's copycat tiles were created by an anonymous artist known as House of Hades.
The Toynbee Tiler continues to inspire artists beyond the direct copycats. Emily Grobe collaborated with Rockford Poet Laureate Adam al-Sirgany on an installation and performance inspired by the Rockford tile.
So head down the rabbit hole with us in this episode of Under Rocks. And we'll see you on Jupiter someday.
Got something interesting, compelling or just weird in northern Illinois or southern Wisconsin you'd like us to investigate? Tell us all about it at rocks@niu.edu.
Under Rocks is produced by WNIJ at Northern Illinois University.
Copy Edited by Eryn Lent
