On Ogden Avenue in North Lawndale, a 50-foot pillar wrapped in a mural is a beacon for the free mural park to come alongside it.
“We hope that it is a signal to anyone going up and down Ogden and to the community that there’s art happening here, there’s energy, there’s something coming,” Chelsea Dawkins, senior project lead for the mural park, told Austin Weekly News. “It’s literally a beacon.”
West Edge Arts unveiled the inaugural mural, titled “Bring It With You,” on Oct. 27 at 3216 W. Ogden Ave. Attendees got a brief tour of the rest of the mural park, which is under construction and opening next summer. It will include a cafe, gardens, two art studios and over 30 murals from new and established artists.
But the site is much more than its physical space.
“There’s not anything like this anywhere in Chicago, let alone here in North Lawndale,” Dawkins said in an interview with Austin Weekly News.
“At its core, West Edge Arts is about making art more accessible, celebrating creativity and bringing people together,” Dawkins told a small crowd at the event. “We want this to be a destination where a family can spend the afternoon exploring art, where a young person can discover a new creative passion, where an emerging artist can develop their skills, and where neighbors and visitors from across the city can connect and experience something new.”
West Edge Arts mural park
When it’s open next summer, the mural park will take up 25,000 square feet. That includes a cafe, gardens, community spaces, two classrooms for arts programming and neighborhood rentals, plus a flexible stage for performances and events.
On the southwest side of the property remains three walls of a historic building that previously sat on the lot. The walls will be painted and included in West Edge Arts, without a roof installed overhead so that an outdoor garden can grow.
The museum’s inaugural piece was created by Dorian Sylvain in partnership with Chicago Public Art Group. It includes inspiration from ceramics, textiles and woodwork to represent the crafts that people from all over the world have brought to Chicago — and the ones established by Native people who were here before.
“Basically, my design is grounded in the question of what makes a place home,” Sylvain said at the unveiling of her mural. “When we leave from our place of origin and we come to a new place, what do we bring that helps us to create a new space, a new home, but one that is still grounded in memory, grounded in tradition, grounded in skills, grounded in aesthetic?”
To Sylvain, much of what makes a new home familiar is the creation of objects with the hands.
“I wanted to look at the arts and crafts that various cultures bring to the city when they migrate or immigrate here,” she said.
The bottom layer of Sylvain’s mural represents beadwork, specifically that of the Potawatomi Nation. The next layer is inspired by basketweaving in Japan, Africa and by Native Americans.
“As we move up, we’re celebrating West Africa, we’re celebrating indigo dyeing. We’re celebrating crocheting and embroidery,” Sylvain said.
Sylvain has been a Chicago artist for 40 years but says the 50-foot pillar is among her largest accomplishments.
“This is the biggest we’ve ever done,” she said. She had help from four young artists, including her son.
The rest of the mural park will include over 30 murals, including 15 large-scale ones.
“I see it as a garden of beautiful adjacencies. The styles of artwork, the artist backgrounds, the approaches they might take, and their professional levels,” said Bob Faust, senior curatorial advisor, on Oct. 27. “I hope that it’s a place where these artists get to meet and discuss what it takes to be an artist at their next level or at their ultimate destination.”
Eventually, new murals will replace old ones, “so there will always be something new to see at West Edge Arts,” Faust said.
Though murals have existed for millennia, modern ones were largely popularized in Chicago. In 1967, “Wall of Respect” became the first large-scale community mural in the country, according to Sylvain.
“Chicago is actually ground zero for the community public art movement that has taken off globally,” she said. “This is so appropriate at this stage, 60 years later, to actually have a space where we can gather and celebrate this idea of public space, public transformation and public reimagination.”
Why North Lawndale?
Dawkins told Austin Weekly News that West Edge Arts was looking for a site that was in a creative community with a rich artistic cultural history, which also had opportunities for local partnerships.
“North Lawndale is home to strong community institutions and leaders who’ve been working at this for years to invest in the neighborhood’s future,” Dawkins said at the mural unveiling. “We saw an opportunity for West Edge Arts to become part of that momentum, building on existing assets rather than creating something in isolation.”
So, they chose the corner of Ogden and Kedzie Avenue.
“This property really stood out to us,” Dawkins told Austin Weekly News. “One, because of what Ogden has meant for Chicago, the connective tissue, the really funky four-lane highway that’s happening, but it’s really a thoroughfare that has been a convener.” Ogden is a part of historic Route 66, which crossed America before the Interstate Highway System was created.
Dawkins said West Edge Arts also liked the physical site. While the auto parts shop that occupied the front of the lot has been demolished, walls of masonry brick surrounding the property will remain, along with a garden in the back of the lot.
“There’s some real kind of beauty here in the site that we really wanted to lean into. Then as we were thinking about the site and falling in love with its physical footprint, we started to meet neighbors and learn about what was happening in North Lawndale.”
West Edge Arts engaged the community to find out what to add for them in the space. In multiple community meetings, locals shared what kinds of classes, workshops and events they wanted to see at the mural park.
And last year, West Edge Arts created a 10-person community advisory group of local residents, artists and officials.
“They provided feedback on our artistic vision, helped shape our community events, introduced us to local artists and businesses, and challenged us in thinking about how this space can best serve the neighborhood,” Dawkins said at the mural unveiling.
West Edge Arts has also hosted two block parties, including one a few weeks ago, that brought hundreds of locals to paint two murals — one of which sits on the front construction fence on Ogden.
“Those experiences have been some of the most rewarding parts of this process because they’ve given us the chance to build a community around West End Arts before the physical space is even completed,” Dawkins said.