Liz Flores has painted murals for clients like Lululemon, Sephora, United Airlines and the Chicago Bears. But for her biggest mural yet, she returned to her hometown of Berwyn.
The mural’s theme is a celebration of Latino heritage in a suburb where about two-thirds of residents identify as Hispanic or Latino. So Flores reached out to residents in the city that raised her for inspiration. As a result, images of community members sipping warm drinks, releasing butterflies, strumming a guitar and beating drums are some of the scenes depicted in the massive mural. It stretches 119 feet long and stands between 11.5 and 21.25 feet tall on the corner of Clarence Avenue and 16th Street.
“I felt so taken care of by the whole community of Berwyn. I think that’s so rare and was such a testament to the Latino community,” says Flores, who grew up and graduated from high school there. She now lives in Avondale.
For this mural, Flores painted images of residents “interacting and working together, and you’re living that experience while you’re doing the mural. I think that’s really special.”
Flores’ mural features colors that resemble a desert sunset. Cool blues, teals and pinks lay among warm reds, yellows, oranges and browns. Flores’ style was first inspired by Pablo Picasso and others in art’s Cubism movement of the early 20th century, she says. Cubism typically highlights abstract structure, geometric shapes and multiple viewpoints of the same object. She blends that with styles and technique she picked up from today’s contemporary artists, many of them Latino.
While painting, Flores says she was surprised at how many in town showed up for a community painting day and then kept returning to help until the mural was done. Neighbors brought her meals and drinks as the temperatures climbed to almost 100 degrees. Many of them had responded to her in-person and online questionnaire about what details they would like to see in the painting.
“I think that really made it special, and it adds to people receiving it well, too,” Flores says. “They feel like they were a part of it, instead of something being added to their community without any input from them.”
Flores finished the mural last month after painting for about three weeks. The Berwyn Public Arts Initiative and the Berwyn Park District commissioned the work on the side of a park district storage building.
“It’s more than just a mural. It’s the celebration of identity heritage and the power of collective creativity,” Kris McDermott, treasurer of the Berwyn Public Arts Initiative, said at the mural’s unveiling ceremony. “This mural has served as a beautiful reminder of what we can create when we work together.”
Flores says her favorite scene in the mural is that of a woman braiding another woman’s hair.
“Hair and hair being braided and things like that, that’s something common within Latino cultures,” she says. “The act of doing someone’s hair, it’s a very familial loving act.”