By Kate Gardiner

The first things that hit the eye on a sunny day in Pilsen are the murals. There is art everywhere—on storefronts, brickwork, churches, restaurants. The Virgin Mary of Guadalupe glows blue and gold on the side of a four-story building; an unfinished Aztec god gazes down on people behind a tortilleria; in an older mural, a portrait of Che Guevara stares accusingly at passers-by, reminding the majority Mexican-American neighborhood of their collective ancestors and traditions.

These images have become symbols of the neighborhood’s identity. And throughout Chicago, emblematic public art encapsulates the people that make up the “city of neighborhoods.”

Experts say, however, that many of the city’s best “contemporary murals”—from the Public Art Renaissance that began in 1967—are in peril.

Artist Caryl Yasko painted a mural in a Hyde Park underpass near 55th and Lake Park Avenue. It has since been plagued by water damage and crumbling cement. She repainted a panel of the 200-foot long work in October, and is trying to find funding to complete the restoration, provided the city of Chicago fixes drainage problems in the underpass that are undoing her efforts.

Yasko says she returned because restoring the mural and keeping it going “affects another several generations of people.” The mural, she says, helps the neighborhood say to the world, “We think in this place.”

Artist and art professor John Pitman Weber, one of the co-founders of the Chicago Public Art Group in the late 1960s, says his mentors encouraged his group to make sure that murals from the first half of the century were preserved. With CPAG executive director Jon Pounds, Weber is fighting the same battle now, to preserve the murals they created.

“We’re continuing to lose the remaining masterpieces from the 1970s and 1980s at a very disheartening rate,” Weber says. “It’s in neighborhoods [all over the city] where it’s gentrifying and it’s more yuppie.”

Alejandro Morales stands in front of the mural he spent the past two months painting at the behest of a private sponsor, one of a few murals painted this year in Pilsen.

Pounds thinks if absolutely no effort is made to restore important murals, “we are choosing to allow them to be destroyed.” On the other side of State Street, Weber says the battle to save aging murals is succeeding. “There’s been less of a loss in the Spanish-speaking and black neighborhoods,” he says. “They have a different attitude about art.”

Marcos Raya, a Mexican painter who has been working in Pilsen since 1971, said he goes back and touches up his murals in the neighborhood, if they still exist. He said the public art he and fellow artists made together in the 1970s reflects history, and should be preserved.

“Chicago was one of the most significant cities for the public art movement,” he says. “The murals gave a sense of identity and change to the working people whocame from all over to see them.”

Weber, reflecting on his own work, says many of his murals—and murals throughout the city—have been lost. Raya said he does not know how many of his murals still exist, but that some of the best murals have already been destroyed. “The historic ones should be reconstructed, so that the younger generation are taught to give different voice to their history,” he says.

Weber says any mural restoration project does have access, at least right now, to many of the artists who painted the original works in the 1970s. “The artist can lead the restoration, or at least advise it,” he says. In cases like Yasko’s, then, the artist is able teach the classical, fine art-mural technique to the young artists helping to repaint the mural while revisiting the historic period of the mural. Mural restoration is expensive, however; the price tag on Yasko’s project, which she expects to pay for with community donations, is at least $40,000.

Weber estimates that for every mural reconstructed, perhaps two or more are lost. But mural restoration is only part of the public art movement today. Many artists are interested in creating wholly new work, and some argue that spending money on restoration may inhibit the painting of new projects in the city.  Other artists wonder if there could be a similar public art movement now.

“I don’t know if [the same kind] of mural art exists any more,” says Yasko. “We need to have a new idea, a strength of ‘saying’ to work with the public. I don’t know if it exists in the cities.”

In Pilsen, says Raya, the murals represent community identity. “One problem with not having a history, is not having a collective identity,” he says. “The murals reflect our fight to have our own alderman, [our own high school.]”

Raya says the buildings reflect Pilsen’s working class struggle to become part of the city, and that they’re being torn out to be replaced by condos. By losing that history, Raya says, “we’re becoming the city of big shoulders. And no head.”

Listen to an audio version of this story.

RECOMMENDED

The walls of Phaiz have been transformed by graffiti artist Jersey Joe Rime. Rime’s letter styling has brought him recognition in and beyond the graffiti world, and the word “Chicago” stands out high and proud on the east wall. Just below the city name and not to be overshadowed, looms a massive, detailed vagina. The giant vag seems artistically appropriate and gratifyingly accurate, not crass. Though Rime’s roots are in the graffiti style he also creates fine art and apparel designs. Phaiz is a boutique where “fashion and art collide” and Rime’s artistic backdrop sets the tone for the presentation of visiting designers’ screen print ensembles and hand-crafted jewelry. Rime’s instillation is certainly something to see if you’re in the area. (Rachel Turney)

Through September 14 at Phaiz, 673 N. Milwaukee Ave., (312) 226-9070.

If you’ve walked around in Wicker Park during July and August, you might have noticed something other than the thick-bearded hipster set: pink-clad bikers riding around, some dressed in full-body white jump suits. Ensconced in the basement of St. Paul’s Community Church for the last month has been Pink, a courier service/conceptual art project in which people can write love notes to anyone they want and have them delivered via bicycle by the project’s volunteers.
“I wanted to do something that engaged people,” says artist Jaclyn Pryor (whose “Pink” name is Heffi McHefferson, a pseudonym of unknown origins), the projector’s director. She was commissioned by First Night Austin, an Austin-based arts festival in 2006, where the project first took place. “We wanted to do something where people could come in and be a part of the experience of something being made.”
Upon walking in, people sit down at a typewriter to hammer their note out, with books of poetry lying around to offer inspiration. After finishing the note, it’s strung up on a clothesline, and the person yells “Love on the line!” as it’s sent down to reception, where the note is collected and logged into a computer which keeps track of every note (the project had couriered around 1,200 notes, according to Pryor). The screed is then sent to the assembly line, where volunteers scroll and bottle the notes before sending them out for delivery.
“It’s interesting to me how vulnerable and intimate people will be in this context,” she says with a small look of surprise on her face. “They know it’s being delivered by volunteers and scrolled by volunteers and they don’t know who’s reading it, but it gives people a vehicle to express things they’re not going to put in an e-mail and not going to say to someone’s face and they don’t have to wait for it to be someone’s birthday.” In fact, everyone is asked whether or not their notes can be scanned and archived for future use. A lot of people agree, meaning that their innermost feelings and desires could be available for anyone to see.
The biking can be arduous. A blown-up map of Chicago has pink dots placed on every area delivered to, including far West, North and South. “We had a courier go out last night to Hyde Park to deliver six notes to Barack Obama,” Pryor laughs. “She tried to deliver them to his house, but the Secret Service told her to send them to his office.”
Though the project has officially ended, Pryor and her co-workers will be in Chicago until the final batch of notes has been delivered. There’ll be a break until next year, when Pink goes back on the road and picks a different city to bless with love notes for a summer month. Their stay in Chicago won’t be soon forgotten by anyone who had the pleasure of finding a biker at their door with a love note in hand. (Jeremy Gordon)

RECOMMENDED

At a new Northwest Side gallery called OhNo!Doom is a current group exhibit consisting of work made in tribute to the late Chicago street artist Brendan McGlynn Scanlon, aka SOLVE. Scanlon’s unexpected death at 24 on June 14 shocked the Chicago street-art-and-graffiti communities. The packed opening reception included a video address from Scanlon’s parents via YouTube and a silent auction was held for the pieces in the show, the proceeds of which will benefit the Madison East Art Department, an organization in Madison, Wisconsin, Scalon’s hometown. Curated by Scanlon’s close friend NiceOne, the show includes work by local artists such as Wise, Joey D and Brooks Golden, answering the question “What is solve?” In a variety of mediums including photography, painting, printing and collage, the answers are all different: a friend, an inspiration, an artist, a movement. This group show is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the memorials and tributes to Scanlon throughout Chicago and Madison. Through his death a part of the Chicago art community grew stronger and more committed to the hope and healing that art can bring. An army of artists has formed in the wake of this tragedy, as tributes to Scanlon’s life and work can be seen at every corner of the city, continuing the dialogue on the issues Scanlon cared about in his own work and life. (Sara McCool)

Through September 19 at OhNo!Doom, 2955 W. Lyndale.

By Jason Foumberg

A cabinetmaker’s dumpster is often a good source for the thin wood planes that Cody Hudson likes to use in his street-art installations. He paints the boards cyan or hot orange, and leaves others with the wood exposed, rounds their edges and stacks them in the gritty alleyways of Chicago, Philadelphia and Columbus, Ohio.

As both an artist and a graphic designer, Hudson plays with the public presentation of an underground style. Roughly hewn and jagged-edged paper cut-outs often jostle with public-domain clip art—made catchy like a dub bass line in Hudson’s hand—and careful dabs of spray-paint, laid out in an orchestrated disorder. Hudson’s stage is the public sphere. Under the moniker Struggle Inc. his illustrations grace snowboards and LP covers, and his sculptural installations are often built from materials found on the street. An upcoming exhibit at New Image Art Gallery in Los Angeles marks the occasion for the release of “Save My Life,” a book spanning the past two years of Hudson’s various artistic enterprises.

In the recent past Hudson’s DIY street-beautification team included Juan Angel Chavez and Michael Genovese, Chicago artists who continue to mine the street aesthetic. The allure and anonymity of street art seems like a youthful indiscretion—just ask Barry McGee or Banksy; sooner or later the itch to go commercial sounds less like selling out and more like reaching a larger audience. These days, Hudson realizes most of his installations in art galleries, although he still does use found wood and other detritus objects such as pots and pans fashioned into a spinning chandelier.

Hudson’s Logan Square studio is an airy white space with an area designated for painting on one end and his Mac on the other. He can flow seamlessly from painting to design, one informing the other, the painting an outlet for his independent visions and the design an opportunity to hear his creative voice resound publicly. In between his painting studio and his design table, pieces of inspiration are taped to the wall: a bootleg Nirvana poster, some examples of package design and a spray-painted upside-down cross (more on that in a minute). The tight composition recalls a similar installation in his 12×12 solo exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in November, 2007. There, Hudson transposed a corner of his studio into the gallery where a painting casually butted up with found-object sculptures, a chair and television set. The piece looked like a 3D sketch, and was an insight into Hudson’s great sense of playful and intuitive composition that is reiterated in many of his cut-paper collages.

Much of the work, the fine art and design alike, are based on abstractions. How can anyone dislike a circle, Hudson asks rhetorically. The strength of a shape such as a circle, continues Hudson, is its many associations and interpretations; its meaning is not limited to its form. Harnessing the boldness of simple shapes, and their attendant accessibility, may have helped propel Hudson to a point of popularity. It’s only recently that the shapes have started coming together into quasi-figurative faces and bodies that, in their quirky simplicity, stand up next to a Miro collage or a Dada-period Picabia line drawing.

The cross or crucifix also features prominently in Hudson’s pieces, although when questioned about it as a recurring motif, Hudson finds little relation between the symbol and any personal religious affiliation. Perhaps like the circle, a cross can be randomly grabbed from the universe of symbols, and its graphic identity can be unfixed and tweaked. Perhaps it has potential as a design element rather than a loaded refrain. In this light Hudson experimented with a series of drawings involving hot-air-balloon-like contraptions that often sport small crosses. The structures float in the middle of pages torn from old books, their edges browning with age. To divine the imagery Hudson imagined that it wasn’t he who drew them, but that they were relics from a manual from a bygone Christian cult. The contraptions, therefore, are machines for spiritual ascension.

The fictional removal of the artist from this series of experimental drawings reflects Hudson’s daily practice of a seemingly authorless graphic-design process. Often the design of, say, a book or a record cover posits a particular style and identity, but its maker sits in the background, almost anonymous to the viewer. The same is true with the street-art installations, as the unsigned works simply live in the city like an elegant but nameless passerby.

Cody Hudson’s book “Save My Life” is available locally at Quimby’s and Penelope’s, $20.

RECOMMENDED

The Hoosier state is showing Chicago some love with this exhibition of long-standing Chicago graffiti stalwarts such as Slang, Risk, Stef, Mike Genovese, ChuCho, Chris Silva, Pilot and many more. With the explosion of graffiti-influenced art, design and advertising it is important to remember why this form of art was so influential in terms of its questioning of public-versus-private space, art versus vandalism, vandalism versus advertising and who controls the urban landscape. With graffiti, the where and the when of the work is not constant and must be given consideration with each piece. As well as showcasing the artists that are the foundation of the graffiti community in Chicago, this show highlights artists that are well versed in the considerations of space and location that are involved in the creation of their visual work. The show includes such stand-out pieces as a tribute to the infamous graffiti bomber CAP by the artist Pilot, entitled “I’m not a graffiti artist, I am a graffiti bomber.” Indeed all of the artists in this show have defined themselves as both bombers and artists. If you want to know the difference and understand why your soda can and sneakers look like they do, you need to see this show. (Sara McCool)

Through July 11 at Indiana University Northwest Gallery for Contemporary Art, 3400 Broadway Ave, Gary IN (219)980-6891. 

RECOMMENDED

When a dead soldier’s body returns home it’s draped in a flag, keeping death at a uniformed distance. In this series of thought-provoking screen prints at the Art on Armitage street gallery, conceptual artist Alan Lerner forces us to reexamine convention and form, and as a result, alters our ingrained servitude towards formality. Through marching bands and feathered caps, Lerner raises consciousness about the dark underside of pomp and circumstance. Civic responsibility, as it turns out, is indicative of society’s need to cloak violence from war in a mask of duty and honor. Two members of a marching band, painted in red, appear against a smoky gray landscape—their whistles and feathered hats just as ominous as their determined, military-style marching. A bright red trumpet juxtaposed against a mass of black and white skulls suggests the inevitability of death as a result of blind allegiance. In Lerner’s most stirring piece, a mysterious black book looms alongside men in conflict, depicting the perilous power of words. In just a few screen prints, Lerner poses a much-needed challenge: how to separate independent thought from societal exigency. By showing the interrelation between the imperative and violence, the artist conveys the need for morality above national obligation. (Marla Seidell)

Through May 31 at Art on Armitage, 4125 W. Armitage.

Artists and community organizers from Chicago’s Wicker Park and Bucktown neighborhoods are unhappy with a decision made by Alderman Manny Flores’ office to whitewash a mural. The painting currently covers half of the 2300 block of West Bloomingdale Avenue. The decision comes after complaints to the office from residents in the condominiums across the street that the mural is gang-related and too “urban.” The wall includes work by several artists who reside in the neighborhood and have been working there for years, such as Melon, Rome, Monstrochika, Denz, Cove and Shipwreck. Melon grew up in Bucktown just blocks from where the mural is located. Also included is the work of recognized artists from around the country, such as COPE2, KET, T-KID and Thor.

Initially, the residents were presented sketches for the wall, including work with a graffiti esthetic. The artists where given the green light to begin work on the wall and used their own money to being the project—$3,000 was originally pledged to the project by both the condo residents and the alderman’s personal funds. To date, the artists have received only one-third of the pledge.

Initial complaints arose from the residents over sexual content in the first pieces that went up. Community advocates Stephanie Garland, an artist, and Mike Bancroft, executive director of Co-op Image, quickly responded to the complaints and used their own money to cover up and revise the content of the wall per the demands of the residents. After this set of revisions, complaints from the residents that the work was gang graffiti persisted, although none of the mural portions contain any gang affiliation, imagery or references. Again, the artists submitted more sketches, but the residents were not happy with them and strongly voiced their desire to the alderman’s office to have the entire wall covered. According to the alderman’s office there are no specific plans for the future of the wall.

Once whitewashed, the wall will likely attract actual gang graffiti and less attractive tags. Some community members are also concerned that the wall will be given over to commercial interests, a situation that alderman Flores says will not happen, stating the wall is for “community use.” Indeed, Mike Bancroft feels Mr. Flores has supported the artists and community organizers by being an advocate for the mural project during meetings with the condo residents.

Although the wall will most likely be covered within the next week, community members are encouraged to express their opinion on the issue at “Ward Night” every Monday from 5pm to 8pm at 2058 North Western Avenue. (Sara McCool)

By Jason Foumberg

Community-based actions and collaborations are distinct traits of Chicago art’s scene. As the new form of public art, bearing no resemblance to the hulking steel monsters that preside in our municipal plazas, they include practices fermented in the grassroots political era of the 1960s and continue today under the banner of pedagogy, which is a strangely academic term for something that involves many beyond the ivory tower. Social sculpture became the key phrase in the 1960s, initiated by German artist Joseph Beuys, to provide the theoretical groundwork for an art form centered on people and actions, not materials and aesthetics. The art of inclusion swiftly took hold in Chicago with the help of several key figures, and many today teach at our universities, for socially engaged art often features an educational effort. One trailblazer in this arena was Michael Piazza, who, for close to thirty years until his death in mid-2006, spurred community initiatives in prisons, with the mentally disabled, in parks and on the streets.

The record of Piazza’s varied projects, spanning decades, is currently collected and on view at the College of DuPage, and the legacy of his actions and collaborations ripple through the lives of his friends, collaborators and students. In one of his workshops, at the juvenile detention center, Piazza helped the participants explore their newfound bound way of life in conceptual terms, beyond painting or drawing. For instance, the sculpture “Lot” from 1995 is a round poker table with handcuffs drilled around the perimeter standing in for the prison poker players. Such objects were exhibited in the first-ever art reception held in the detention center and attended by the public. “Lot” helped the prisoners think through what exactly constitutes the notion of fun while incarcerated, and it also presented outsiders, or the public, with an idea of what “community” meant on the inside.

Piazza’s collaborators did not always take the form of his family, friends or fellow artists. Jim Duignan, co-curator of the retrospective exhibition, called Piazza’s life and art “a seamless, uninterrupted action.” For Piazza, living in Logan Square also meant making art there, which meant connecting with the neighborhood’s residents, some of whom were in the juvenile prison where he vitalized the art programming. He inspired the idea that living can be artful by simple creativity, such as creating a connection where none had previously existed. This could include initiating conversation and making introductions, or a festival in the park. Most of the art objects on view also push this notion of readymade objects that simply need to be brought together. Collage and assemblage are the results of this process, a literal fusion of art and life.

Piazza’s longtime colleagues, including Duignan, Bertha Husband, Brian Dortmund (all co-curators of the exhibit) and wife Laura Piazza came to loathe the term “collaboration,” sensing that it was a misused idea among artists. From then on they would refer to their projects as “log-rolling,” an activity that required the same amount of balance from all workers in order to keep afloat. It was around this time that Piazza took part in founding Axe Street Arena, a gallery and social space at the Milwaukee, Diversey and Kimball intersection. This served as home base for Piazza’s projects—which he would probably never term “his” projects, but rather the community’s—including an exhibition for graffiti artists that brought together many of the city’s taggers, most of whom were familiar to each other only by their tags, not faces. Axe Street Arena is remembered as a hotbed for the new type of social sculpture. In 1998, nine years after Axe Street closed, the newly formed collaborative art group Temporary Services, now based in Rogers Park at Mess Hall, kicked off their exhibition program with a memorial to Piazza and company’s old Logan Square space.

It seemed Piazza was always a sort of revolutionary of the disenfranchised, giving voice to those who many would rather never hear from, such as prisoners and graffiti artists, and those who have no platform. One project was simply making a copy machine available to people producing zines and other DIY literary ventures. The cost of copying was their only overhead, and so Piazza erased that burden. Duignan explained that through these communal interactions, Piazza was breeding the type of city he wanted to live in; like an underground alderman, he picked up the community’s interests and facilitated their progression into shapely, lovely things.

Piazza’s subjects—gangs, prisoners, graffiti—may seem beyond repair, and his projects may seem counterproductive to the practice of “art.” But it was exactly this quality of stroking against the grain that turned on other like-minded artists, and in the end produced more and more self-motivated individuals. Much of his writing and his legacy deal with overthrowing the deathly trappings of consumer capitalism, and in this way he was a theorist of punk attitudes, and a composer of mute voices. In Piazza’s own words: “It is best to listen to the many voices that until now have been silenced.”

The Work of Michael Piazza shows at the Gahlberg Gallery at the College of DuPage, 425 Fawell, Glen Ellyn, (630)942-2321, through April 19. 

RECOMMENDED

James Jankowiak’s one-person includes paintings and a wall installation constructed from repeated, small, ornate black and red candies. The artist’s intention behind the work in this show is how individuals “express faith through repetitive rituals in our everyday lives.” From the work this concept may not be completely clear, but Jankowiak’s work succeeds on a visual scale alone. When artists venture into novel or new mediums many times it is for the novelty of the medium itself, however the candy Jankowiak has chosen to work with in this show works so seamlessly with his paintings that the candies seem like he created them himself. Jankowiak is a born and raised Chicago artist who has never taken a painting class. He has, however, graduated with honors from the university of Graffiti, beginning his career writing the name Casper. Graffiti, a medium that directly contradicts the laws of commercial art, with its emphasis on innovation, saturation and dynamic visuals, continually produces some of the most commercially successful artists. Jankowiak maintains his past visual creativity and soul while making new work that has mass appeal. It is difficult not to describe his work as “tasty,” especially when he incorporates candy. (Sara McCool) 

James Jankowiak, “Southside Spiritual,” shows at 32nd & Urban Gallery, 3201 South Halsted, through February 29.