The intricate new mosaic at Irving Park’s Irish American Heritage Center contains so many subtle details of Irish history and culture that it takes some time to absorb them all.
You still might miss some.
The new mosaic, from nonprofit organization Green Star Movement, is spread across six panels on the building’s west-facing wall, overlooking the garden. But it’s really like six different mosaics wrapped into one, with each panel telling a different tale about the history of Ireland and the global Irish diaspora, many of whom settled in Chicago.
“What does being Irish mean to them?” says Paul Dowling, executive director of Irish Community Services, which operates on the building’s third floor. He initiated and managed the project and put that question to members of Chicago’s Irish community as they pondered what to include in the new mosaic.
Dowling also gives credit to the staff at Green Star Movement, who included details like the “dancer with a face like a warrior. It’s a really intricate face.”
The mosaic is divided into three columns, with each column broken into two rows about one-third of the way down the piece. The pattern resembles the outline of the windows elsewhere on the former elementary school building.
In the bottom center, rising about two-thirds of the way up the mosaic, is the fierce-looking Irish dancer, with red hair pulled up behind her head and a dress of green, white and gold with light blue accent. The Irish words “rince,” meaning dance, and “amhran,” meaning song, appear down either side of the panel.
To the left of the dancer stands an Irish high tower, which is emblematic of Ireland. Swans soaring in the sky represent those from The Children of Lir, an Irish legend about the four children of King Lir whose stepmother turned them into swans. They remained that way for 900 years.
On the bottom right, a woman and man play a harp and bodhrán, with a violin and tin whistle around them in the frame. The Irish knot at the top is the symbol of the Irish American Heritage Center. Downing called this one a “nod to the performative culture of Ireland.”
On the top left, the profile of Mother Jones, the Irish-born Chicago labor organizer, looks south while the words “fight for them” are printed under and around her. Books and picket signs pile up at the bottom of the frame.
In the top center, the Celtic Tree of Life features the knot of Irish Community Services woven into its crown. And on the top right, the two hands holding each other in front of a brilliant candle represent the outreach of Ireland’s first female president Mary Robinson, who served from 1990 to 1997. She placed a candle in the window of her presidential home as a symbol of welcome to the world’s Irish diaspora.
The mural was finished in September and came about as the center was finishing construction on a parking lot and installing a new garden. Dowling looked at the project and says he thought, “why not a little bit of art?”
So he reached out to Kamelia Hristeva, founder and CEO of Green Star Movement, whom he knew from his time previously serving as a board member with Little Brothers – Friends of the Elderly. The two groups shared a building in the West Loop.
Green Star works with Chicago students to build the group’s murals, and held listening sessions and building days with members of the Irish Community. From there, staff pulled the larger themes and smaller details that ultimately made it into the mural.
Now, Dowling says, he’s proud and delighted with how the project turned out — “a mural celebrating our Irish connection.”