Chicago murals: a look back at some favorites from 2020

Looming above the L tracks in Wicker Park is an “I AM A MAN” mural inspired by a 1968 photograph from a memorial for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The creation was led by Darius Dennis, and the mural went up two months after the nation erupted in protests over George Floyd’s killing by a white police officer in Minneapolis. A number of murals focusing on Black lives and civil rights sprouted across Chicago in 2020. | Robert Herguth / Sun-Times

This past year has been very good for public art around Chicago.

Not great for many people, given the pandemic, the crazy politics, the gut-wrenching racial unrest. But good for public art.

The angst and anxiety thrust upon us in 2020 seemed to spur artists to paint even more deeply from the heart in an effort to capture what we were going through and maybe even provide a little balm for us all.

The Chicago Sun-Times has been spotlighting much of their work in the ongoing “Murals & Mosaics” series. Here are some of the more notable murals we featured in 2020.

Artist Dredske painted this “Black Lives Matter” mural on wood panels at Ashland and Chicago avenues in West Town. Murals sprang up across the city in 2020 in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis, many on businesses boarded up during the unrest with messages of peace, hope and justice.

A street artist who goes by the name “Nick Apple” painted a portrait on a business in Wicker Park of Ahmaud Arbery, who was killed while jogging in Georgia in February. In the same area, Apple also has done murals featuring images of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, who were killed by police, and Oluwatoyin Salau, killed in Florida.

This mural titled “The Essentials” — painted on a storefront near the Six Corners intersection on the Northwest Side — was done by artist Cyd Smillie as a tribute to the workers on the front lines of the pandemic, including first-responders, garbage haulers and restaurant employees.

A number of Chicago-area alleys have been transformed into virtual galleries in recent years, like this one in Little Village in the shadow of the Cook County Jail. Dozens of murals were painted there as part of a yearly, all-female graffiti jam called Splash that was started by two women who, for their art, go by the names Bel and Phina.

What started as a single mural on a garage door blossomed into more than a dozen large-scale paintings by artists from around the world in an alley between Noble and Bishop streets in West Town. The mural at left is by Thai artist Mue Bon. The other is by the Colombian artist known as Stinkfish.

Teresa Parod painted a series of garage murals in Evanston, including this one featuring someone’s pet. She was inspired by public art in Cuba — and her son’s comment that not enough people saw her paintings. “I would love if other people painted their garages,” she says.

The CTA can be pretty grimy, but it’s also home to some amazing art. The latest count shows 72 works of public art at 61 CTA locations. Another 13 transit stations had temporary artwork. This piece, Sabina Ott‘s “A Red Line and a Cloud,” was completed in 2007 at the CTA’s 63rd Street Red Line L station. It was among the transit art showcased by the Chicago Sun-Times this past year.

One of our favorite Chicago artists is Max Sansing, who completed this mural — part of a two-part painting he did on 79th Street with Kayla Mahaffey — called “New Frontiers, Same Old Nine.” Keys — like the one his father once used while working for the CTA — are a common sight in his art.

Chicago murals also include lighter fare, like this giant octopus by Dixon artist Nora Balayti on the Near West Side. The creature’s name? “Maud” — a nod to actress Maud Adams, who costarred with Roger Moore in the 1983 James Bond movie “Octopussy.”

Click on the map below for a selection of Chicago-area murals