Special Edition Blog: Tour of Hyde Park Murals

Me in front of a mural painted by William Walker called "Childhood is Without Prejudice"



Tour Guide Jon Pounds



People at the tour with me

 

For my second trip I went on a tour to see the murals of Hyde Park. It was a very interesting trip with discoveries about the artist that I never knew. I chose this in particular because I have been through Hyde Park many times, but never took the time out to enjoy the murals in the viaducts. We had a very kind guide by the name of Jon Pounds (Executive Director of the Chicago Public Art Group), who took us through and answered our questions about the amazing artwork. Here are some pictures that inspired me along the way.



Albert Zeno



  

 

                                    

                                                                          

This oil paint was done by a man named Albert Zeno, called "Alewives and Mercury Fish" (1972). This mural was about the pollution of the Great Lakes by factorys and the invasion of Alewives fish into fresh water. He linked mans enslavement of nature to the enslavement of black people, which going through the mural they both become free. The thing that really drew me to this piece was the fact that little is known about Mr. Zeno. He is not famous like the other painters and as a matter of fact he was a poor man who lived in his car, while he did volunteer work painting murals. According to our tour guide, he was helping paint another mural , when he asked for some paint for himself. He then went across the viaduct and painted his own mural. The little people know about him is that he had no formal training, he just painted. He then after a while could not be found and a search was sent out for him. Later, Mr. Pound told us that he had died. What inspired me was here is a ordinary man that was not known to the public as a great anything, but painted a mural that has had a impact on the Hyde Park viaducts for more than 35 years. Since he had no voice in the "popular artistic circle", his work (a lasting legacy) speaks volumes in the viaducts of Hyde Park. 

  The name of this painting is "Maskamorphosis" by Calvin Jones. It was done with acrylic paint on canvas. his one of a number of paintings that are of African influence. The mask point to the duality of good and evil. Since it is a metamorphisis he uses the vibrant color and line-work to capture the transition between the two sides. You can really tell the sides apart due to the calm expression on the mask's face to the left opposed to the one on the right. You can almost feel the change between the two sides from the color directly in the middle of the picture. Another very interesting fact about Mr. Jones is that while he created paintings he was declared legally blind. He had like a sort of tunnel vision to where he could only see a few inches in front of him. He would compose his art on napkins or anything he could find to construct these paintings. In my opinion with the state of his vision this was an amazing feat. To be able to create art in spite of his setback and also for it to come out as good as it did in his collection. This painting reminds me also of the ultimate roles we can choose in life. Which do we choose to rise above the trials of life or be morphed into a monster created by them?

 

                                        

  The third piece that inspired me was created by Olivia Gude, the wife of our tour guide Mr. Pounds. The title of this mural is "Where We Come From....Where We're We Going". It was created using acrylic paint on the walls of the viaduct. The inspiration for this piece was the racial tension between people in Chicago. So she started to create this mural asking people of different races the question, where are you going? The question became one that could be answered in many ways. The end result was the answers ranged from spiritual, physical, and mental. She got the name from the philosopher Plato when he asked, "Where are you coming from and where are you going." The people in the mural are the actual people she met to answer her question. This was a not only an art piece for social change between races, but it started a conversation of the introspective. I like how she conveys the busy expressions on some of their faces that catch them in transition.  It inspired me because how all races are depicted on the same level of finding some type of destination. When we think about it, some of our answers are not that different at all. We have more in common than we all realize regardless of race. This piece made me ask myself the same question of where do I want to go in the future? What exactly do I want to be regarding art and how do I get there? To me there is no greater experience than the spark of thought that can ignite the passion for creating art that comes from the soul.  

Special Edition Blog: Trip to the Art Institute








Professor Peck



  The name of this piece is called "Composition in Blue" (1921-1927) and it was done by Fernand Le'ger. It was created with oil on canvas and it was painted during his "mechanical period". In this period, he created paintings that had tubular machine like structures to them. This piece inspired me because of these mechanical parts and the shapes that are formed from them. It is funny when you think of any type of mechanics you think of a designed "order" to things. The painting is shaped in an abstract form seemingly unorganized, but all somehow related like the chaos theory. In the painting it seems like a robot (upperleft) is climbing a rocket or building. As the rest of the city shaped in circles and squares lay in the background. Also I notice like little eyesin he piece as if to be onlookers watching the robot scale the rocket.

 
  This piece was created by Lee Bontecou in 1960, the piece is "Untitled". The untitled piece was composed of old canvas discarded from an old laundry. The canvas was stretched and attached by copper wire to an armature and welded framework. From reading the description in the museum, it compares the opening (hole) to a geographical or biological reference. Like maybe a volcano, a black hole, or a hole in the human body. It inspired me because seeing the hole led me to the question of what is inside? The layered canvas provides endless possibilities or answers to the question. If one thought on the biological level you would look into a body to see bones and organs. If another looked through the hole on a geographical level, you would expect to see the earths crust or its molten hot center. If I looked at the hole on an spiritual level, I would expect to see a soul or a lack of it. Therefore, begging an introspective question, asking is my soul still intact according to my actions or has it become polluted/lost due to them. I wonder what someone else would see inside.

 
  This oil painting was created by the surrealist painter Yves Tanguy, called "The Rapidity of Sleep" in 1945. This painting inspired me because of the ripple affects the brush strokes make you seem to travel at a great speed. Even with the cluods they give the same affect causing a blur because when moving at a slower pace the clouds would be more defined. The object in the landscape looks to me like a wasteland of broken bones. The bones represent to me a sign of aging, that these bones or the structure of what the dream was is starting to end. As if the framework for the dream state of sleep is decaying at a fast pace, waiting for the dreamer to awake.
 

Week 8 - Series 6

  This piece is called "From the World's Cage to Glory". It is basically, a recreation of Series 3.

Week 7 - Series 5

  The name of this piece is called "War of the Fragile Heart". It was inspired by the last piece, from which I am dealing with the time that transpired between series one and two. I wanted to look into not only his mind state, but also his heart or his will to live due to the circumstances that transpired. In the picture, we see inside of the man's body being entered by a black hand. The black hand would belong to one of the reapers that was shown in series one. The difference in this hand is the light spots which are made to be boils, demonstrating that the hand is an infection to the body. The hand seeks to destroy the last remaining life that he has. The man that is within the body is a representation of his soul, which is fighting for the heart that is being taken out of his chest. The soul's color is gray and he has black marks over his body to show the strain the hand is putting him through. He is also gray to show in a since that he is dying; the soul has no vibrancy therefore his will to sustain his own life is dwindling. He struggles to fight for the heart that he has left. I find personally in life, that sometimes trials & tribulations seek to destroy your will, when it has stripped you of everything else. The only options left are to either give in/die or to fight with what you have left to survive the destroying of ones soul. The drawing was done in pencil and was outlined in Illustrator. The coloring of the heart and boils were done in Illustrator. The soul, hand, and background were done with prisma-color pencils.

Week 6 - Series 4

  This piece of the series is called "The Conflict of Emotions". In creating this picture, I wanted to take a look at what mind state the man in the series would be in between the first and second pieces of the series. Being afflicted by these different "situations" in the first piece, the question would be how has this affected him? The answer would be his brain is over taken by a host of emotions that control him. The following emotions are (from left to right) confusion, sorrow, anger, greed, anguish and depression. He is no longer in control of his life, but a slave to his own mind. Being in a place of torment which is depicted in the first series, he loses himself. All goals and visions of a better future are lost in a brain of negative emotions. The white eye he has alludes to the control that he is under. So he is in a self induced limbo waiting fo some type of salvation to come. This piece was created through the medium of Adobe Illustrator.