Western Avenue has another multistory mural for drivers to gaze at while they’re stuck in traffic, this time at the corner of West Leland and North Western avenues in Lincoln Square.
Artist Katie Lukes of Humboldt Park painted her five-story mural on a new building on the northeast corner of the intersection. Her bursting blooms of bright red, pink and yellow flowers contrast against the recent gray skies and white, snow-covered ground. It stretches about 40 feet wide and 61 feet tall.
Lukes says her floral images pay tribute to Lincoln Square’s history with flower production. In the 1800s, “they had big greenhouses where they would produce the flowers and send them to the city,” she says.
And the farmer harvesting celery in the bottom corner, among the fields of varying shades of green, also nods to Lincoln Square’s past. While many identify with its popular farmer’s market, the area once grew celery and cucumbers, Lukes says.
Lukes put in a bid when the Lincoln Square/Ravenswood Chamber of Commerce sought proposals for a mural on the multistory, mixed-use building that is replacing what was once a parking lot.
She used her signature bright color palette and brush-painted the image directly onto the siding on the north side of the new, mostly brick building. She and her assistant painted seven to 10 hours a day for 12 days in October and November to finish it.
During that time she looked out over the intersection that has been under construction for months on one of Chicago’s busiest thoroughfares. “I could feel the tension while I was painting. These people are not happy,” says Lukes, remembering the constant honking while she worked. “Hopefully the bright simple flowers ease people’s road rage.”
Much of her work is indoors or for commercial clients. She has painted for Bucktown Arts Fest, live painted at Chicago Public Library fairs and painted temporary murals for Choose Chicago’s Chicago Style.
While she painted the new mural, she says, birds would create a murmuration at the same time every day, flying in group formation before her.
“They would do that right in front of the mural every day,” she says. “It was one of my favorite parts of working on that.”
Other large-scale artwork has appeared on Western Avenue this year. Just north of Lukes’ painting is Oscar Joyo’s LOVE, LANA (LANA LOVE), which stretches about 24 feet wide by 40 feet tall on a mixed use, three-story building at 4879 N. Lincoln Ave. off Western Avenue. It features a woman wearing green headphones and a green shirt and long, black hair flowing down her back.
In West Town, artist Ryan Tova Katz’s mural titled “Who You’ve Always Been” is dedicated to Marsha P. Johnson, one of the best-known protesters in the gay community’s Stonewall Uprising. The mural is a two-story image of a young Black girl in a sundress with her shoulders back and head up, a crown of matching blooms on her hair. That mural is at 1048 N. Ashland Ave.