The Cook County Health Austin Health Center is getting a new mural in its main waiting room to celebrate healthcare workers. Full-time artist Robert Valadez is painting the mural, which will be completed June 12.
“I wanted to tell a story about how important healthcare workers are to everyone’s daily life,” Valadez said.
The Cook County Health Foundation put out an open call late last year for muralists to create public art at four of their health centers, including Austin Health Center, 4800 W. Chicago Ave. The foundation also paid three muralists last year to decorate Cook County health centers.
“Over the last two years, we’ve been focusing on beautifying our clinical spaces and creating art that’s not only for our space, but reflective of our communities and the patients that we serve,” said Alexandra Normington, Cook County Health’s associate chief communications and marketing officer.
Cook County Health held community engagement meetings with local residents and Austin Health Center staff so they could share their thoughts on the mural.
“They would put in their input, and I would try to adapt their ideas into a final design,” Valadez said of the process.
The mural will be installed on polytab, a non-woven fabric. Valadez will paint the mural with acrylics in his studio, then his work will be photographed, printed on the fabric and installed in the waiting room like wallpaper. On June 12 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Austin Health Center staff, patients and community members will help him paint the piece’s background, a bold floral motif.
The artist’s journey
Valadez, who lives near Midway International Airport, grew up in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago and has known he’d be an artist since elementary school.
“I knew I wanted to do something creative,” Valadez said. “I couldn’t articulate it back then, but it was probably always in the cards. It was my nature.”
Valadez started painting while attending Benito Juarez High School, then studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the American Academy of Art. Since, he’s done public art throughout the country, but mostly in the Midwest.
In Chicago, Valadez helped paint the mural A La Esperanza at his high school in 1979, and others in the school’s atrium in following years. His other Chicago mural sites include the Harold Washington Library, The Hideout, Midway International Airport and the CTA’s Pink Line station at 18th Street.
But Valadez’s career hasn’t been without its hardships.
“I’ve had some health challenges of my own, and I’ve been tended to by people who work very hard,” he said of healthcare workers. “I’ve grown to admire the work that they do.”
Valadez plans to include the likeness of one of the technicians who took care of him during his 20 rounds of radiation for prostate cancer last fall.
“The ones who are doing the day-to-day work are the ones that I really want to honor,” said Valadez of technicians and nurses. He hopes that will be the takeaway of those who see his mural. “Healthcare workers are an important part of any community, and the work that they do should be appreciated.”