Behind the Makeup: Chicago's Silver Man Reads Nietzsche, Lives for Michigan Ave Crowds

‘He knows that he can not reveal himself to anybody…When he is talking to his soul, he wears a mask…There is a loneliness within his heart, which neither praise nor blame can reach, because he is his own judge with whom there is no appeal.’

-Friedrich Nietzsche, Will To Power

The eyes of the Silver Man, a living statue on Michigan Avenue, are hidden behind sunglasses. People fascinated by him peer closer.

Is he a statue? Is he a robot?

The enigmatic street performer is Preston Dinwiddie. He is 25 years old.

Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” pumps out of the stereo. Occasionally, when strangers throw dollars into his can, he jumps to life. Sometimes it’s just for an instant. But sometimes he slithers down from his platform and does the moonwalk, making the sidewalk appear to be water under his feet.

“I’m impressed by the way he is able to control himself,” said passerby Walid Gerard, who is from France. “No movement—he looks like a robot.”

“I really don’t want them to know I’m human,” Dinwiddie said.

He’s been attracting crowds for nearly five years. His spot is on Michigan Avenue outside the Niketown, between Huron and Erie streets.

He works in good weather, usually three or four days per week in spring and fall, and five or six days per week in the summer. He doesn’t work in the winter.

As a child, he was at first attracted to the drums. As the Peoria native grew up, he turned his attention to drawing and dance. The artist in him said his favorite time of year is the fall, “because it has all the beautiful colors.”

Somewhere along the line, he said, he got hooked on Michael Jackson. In sixth or seventh grade he learned how to do the moonwalk. When he attended high school at Bloom Trail in Chicago Heights and Glenbard East in Lombard, he’d always do it to get a reaction out of the girls.

“I think Michael Jackson fascinated me because he’d try to do everything so perfect. And I just wanted to be perfect like him. It really looked like he was walking on water.”

But when he performs, he sets “Smooth Criminal" to loop on his stereo and puts headphones on. He likes rap artists like Canibus, Jay-Z and Little Wayne, and R&B singers R. Kelly, Usher and Beyonce.

When he’s performing, he doesn’t dance for every dollar. “It just depends on the psychology of the crowd.” He said after doing it for so many years, he knows when it’s the right time to move.

Once he remained motionless for 2 hours and 26 minutes, he said. “Your feet start hurting after a while because you lose circulation and stuff like that, but it’s all right. It’s not that bad.”

He takes strength from Friedrich Nietzsche’s book Will to Power. “What he taught was strengthening your will power…every time I’m doing the living statue I think of this. I read it before I go to work.”

He said he doesn’t think the people watching him are looking for entertainment.

“They’re really paying me to look into their souls, and see what type of person they are. Are they weak, or are they strong? I’ve learned a lot about people just from looking at them, and seeing their reactions.”

He is considering going back to college soon to study exercise physiology and political science. He wants to be a personal trainer and dreams of opening his own laboratory to experiment in athletic performance enhancement.

He often is hired for parties. People drop their business cards into his can and he calls them. “But the most fun I ever have is when I’m out on Michigan in front of Niketown,” he said. “That’s the best audience, period.”

He had planned to stop performing after the 5-year mark, he said, but then he saw a living statue from San Francisco on YouTube who he felt was better than him, and it inspired him to improve his own moves.

He’s been married almost three years, and six weeks ago he and his wife, Christabel, had their first baby, Preston Jr. They recently moved from Joliet to a small apartment a few blocks from where he works on Michigan Avenue.

It takes about an hour to put on his make-up and costume, and another hour getting it off, he said. The paint he uses is non-toxic, but it’s hard to find a paint that won’t come off when you sweat but will come off with water. Now that he lives close to work, he can go home in the middle of a hot day, rest, see his wife and child and re-do his make-up before going back out.

At first, Christabel didn’t like it that her husband was the Silver Man.

“I think it was because it was just too different…I felt like it wasn’t a steady job, because what if it’s cold five days in a row? Then how do you pay your bills? It was a risk to me, but now I’m used to it, so it’s okay.”

Dinwiddie makes enough to support his family so that his wife doesn't have to work. But his apartment is small, and he still uses a disc man, not an iPod.

She added when they have time alone, “we go for walks, watch TV together, eat macaroni and cheese, come up with new ideas…He’s very creative. His mind moves at a very fast pace.”

“I think it’s not only a statue, it’s all a mind [set]," said Mary, who is a friend of Dinwiddie and likes to incorporate robotic movements into her dance. "It requires patience, motivation, a lot of things,” she said.

View others like Dinwiddie at the World Statues Championship in Holland: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0p99azgXto