Father and twins contribute to Joliet guitar art

A display of guitar art to be unveiled this week will include a contribution from the Benedick family – a father and his son and daughter.

The Ready to Rock project will put 12 guitar sculptures on the sidewalks of downtown Joliet this summer. Anyone interested in seeing all 12 guitars together can come to the kick-off event at 5 p.m. Thursday in the plaza at the Joliet Junior College City Center Campus, 235 N. Chicago St.

Guitars on display will include one created by the Benedicks, who live in Channahon now but have Joliet roots that are depicted in the artwork on the guitar they painted for the street art display.

Jonah and Sophia Benedick are twins entering their senior year at Minooka Community High School.

Their father, Jeff, studied art in college and is a union ironworker with Ironworkers Local 444 in Joliet.

The Ready to Rock project will put 12 guitar sculptures on the sidewalks of downtown Joliet this summer. Anyone interested in seeing all 12 guitars together can come to the kick-off event at 5 p.m. Thursday in the plaza at the Joliet Junior College City Center Campus, 235 N. Chicago St.

—  City of Joliet

Put them together, and you have a 6-foot guitar depicting the bridges of Joliet, including the railroad bridge over the Des Plaines River, that in a small way shows the family roots.

Jonah “is the detail man,” his father said. “He put the man on the back of the train.”

That man on a train shown on the guitar represents Ugo Valley, Jeff’s great-uncle and an Italian immigrant who came to Vermont and went to work on the railroads. That work brought him to Joliet where he found Florence Benedick, Jeff’s great-aunt.

“And, that’s how the families met,” Jeff said.

Jonah is an aspiring animator.

Sophia plans to be an engineer.

“I plotted out what the bridges would look like,” she said.

The three of them sketched out their plan before going to work on the fiberglass guitar provided by the City Center Partnership, the sponsor for the Ready to Rock street art exhibit.

It’s not the first Joliet art project for the three Benedicks, and it won’t be the last.

Jeff, Jonah and Sophia are members of Old Joliet Prison Burned District Artists, a group that has created art work out of materials remaining from buildings beset by arsonists at the former Joliet Correctional Center.

They next plan to create a lamp sculpture for the Summer of Stone and Steel Art Exhibition in Joliet.

They have sketched out the artwork to depict their own special connection to Joliet when the Benedicks lived near Six Corners in Joliet. Jonah and Sophia graduated from St. Mary’s Nativity Catholic School in Joliet before the family moved to Channahon. Their previous home was close to Joe’s Hot Dogs.

“We used to go to Joe’s Hot Dogs and sit on a log and eat French fries out of a greasy bag,” Jeff said.

And, that’s the scene to be depicted for the Summer of Stone and Steel Art Exhibition.

Jeff said, “It’s going to be us eating greasy French fries at Joe’s hot dogs.”