Public art by world-renowned creators is a seminal part of Chicago’s urban landscape. Anish Kapoor’s beloved 2006 silver sculpture in downtown Millennial Park, known as “The Bean” (officially “Cloud Gate”), is as much a symbol of the city as Chicago’s sports stars and its skyscrapers.
Now, timed to the Democratic National Convention (Aug. 19 -22), Chicago is debuting a new array of public art throughout the city, much of it by local talent, and all on democratic (with a lowercase “D”) themes.
Starting Aug. 12, a handful of the city’s famous elevated trains covered in the work of emerging artists and designers will take to the tracks of the Chicago Transit Authority, accompanied by a series of cultural events in neighborhoods throughout the city.
The project, called “Track(ed) Changes,” along with the related community events, jibes with the city’s promise to Chicagoans to broaden the limelight and to spread the economic impact of the convention through many of the city’s 77 neighborhoods. More than 50,000 people are expected to descend on United Center, home of the Chicago Bulls of the N.B.A. and the Blackhawks of the N.H.L.
“It’s not just downtown,” said Clinée Hedspeth, a former art appraiser and curator who in March became commissioner of the city’s department of cultural affairs and special events. The department provided more than $100,000 in funding for “Track(ed) Changes.” With attention from all over the world, Chicago is eager to showcase the art it has long created for the public, dating at least to 1899, “in an uplifted and intentional way that reflects the city,” Hedspeth said.
It was her predecessor, Erin Harkey, who commissioned the designer Bob Faust, 58, to curate the El project. He chose dozens of young emerging artists to show that the city has a deep bench of creative talent beyond just “our premier heavy hitters,” he said, ticking off Chicago’s internationally known contemporary art stars like Kerry James Marshall and Faust’s own romantic (and sometimes creative) partner Nick Cave.
“It’s all democracy related and fabulous,” Faust said. Artists — he included himself in the group — were asked to contribute work to make a “moving mural” highlighting the ideals of democracy, with that decidedly small “d”: no overt (or covert) political opinions or electioneering. (That said, the project’s description includes not just civic engagement but also words likely to be heard at this convention: “diversity, equity, inclusion, equality and choice.” The trains enveloped in art will ride the rails for up to a year.
Kristoffer McAfee, 38, is especially excited to see his artwork on the train that traverses the Hyde Park neighborhood, his lifelong home, on Chicago’s South Side.
In a video interview from his new studio in the Pilsen area, he explained that his art career began with tagging trains at age 13; graffiti let him “be seen and heard in an environment where you don’t often get the platform for that to happen,” he said. McAfee moved on to mural-making, but it was images of that graffiti, which he painted into his late teens (“I never got caught for it, thank God!”), that earned him a scholarship to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He received his M.F.A. from Yale in 2022.
His art on the El abstracts the symbols for earth, water, fire, air and ether to suggest the connectedness people share at the elemental level, while the varied colors celebrate what makes individuals and cultures unique, he said. His train design is based on his five-panel, acrylic and gold foil painting titled “Universal Identity” (2020), currently on view in a survey show in the new 10,000-square-foot artspace, Secrist Beach, near the West Loop (through Aug. 23).
For Chicago to encourage and pay “for my work and my message to go around the city, it’s very much full circle and serendipitous at the same time,” he said.
Esperanza Rosas, 30, known as Runsy, is not represented by any gallery. She earns her living with commercial drawing and design collaborations, like those for the Bulls and the White Sox, whose home field is near her house on Chicago’s South Side.
Rosas found inspiration in the artist Shepard Fairey’s “Hope” (2008), the seminal, stylized and much litigated portrait in red, white and blue that became the official image of fellow South-Sider Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign.
She emblazoned her train car in a tattoolike typeface with her first name, which she shares with several generations of relatives: “‘Esperanza’ in Spanish is ‘Hope,’ ” she explained. “I wanted to speak to people who look like me and spoke like me — Latino people.”
At the center is an image she drew of her niece holding a bouquet of sunflowers. The girl is pictured from behind, looking away, Rosas said, “toward a more hopeful future.” Rosas links hope with voting: “It’s not just about the presidential elections — it’s bigger,” she said, stressing that candidates all the way down every ballot impact local lawmaking.
The other artists participating in “Track(ed) Changes” are Brandon Breaux, Noel Mercado and Carlos Rolón, as well as two groups of teenagers involved with the youth development nonprofits Territory and Urban Gateways (where Faust has been an adviser since 1998). Both groups focus on art and design within the built environment.
Also throughout Chicago, earlier this month, the artist-led nonprofit For Freedoms, which has used billboards in previous election seasons in all 50 states, debuted five billboards featuring art designed to encourage civic engagement. The designers include Ebony G. Patterson (who lives in Chicago and Jamaica); and the Chicagoan Jake Troyli. Both are represented by a local gallery, Monique Melouche.
The initiative is in partnership with Gertie, a civic and cultural agency that raised $400,000 in community grants. Its founder Abby Pucker, 32, is a cousin of JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor.
Gertie is underwriting other happenings also, in neighborhoods that tourists and many affluent Chicagoans rarely see. The events are being produced under the umbrella of “Next Stop: Chicago,” in partnership with community organizations. The aim is “to amplify” Faust’s project, Pucker said, and to draw Chicagoans and convention visitors to communities along the Green Line of the El (or L, as the city calls its transportation system), which connects the West and South Sides to the convention center and downtown. But “Next Stop: Chicago” also aims to highlight what she called “infrastructure inequity” in those neighborhoods. Among the projects is art-making on a city block that has a history of violent crime. Starting Aug. 21, the group Arts + Public Life is hosting a two-day festival in Washington Park on a public green space called Arts Lawn.
At a key moment, with all eyes on Chicago, Pucker added, the events will show “how investing in divested communities is a bipartisan issue — especially communities of color.”
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