CTA Red Line riders through Lake View have a new mural to catch just east of the Sheridan stop.
Artist Anthony Lewellen — also known by his graffiti name Antck — added a bright and welcoming pop of color stretching 80 feet across and 26 feet up the wall behind the Nourishing Hope building at 3945 N. Sheridan Road. Neighbors grasp hands, hand off groceries and gather around a circular table. Big bright circles within circles of various colors, Lewellen’s signature shape, billow behind the scenes.
The Red Line rumbles directly across the way from the three-story painting, all done with spray paint.
Mitzi Baum, CEO of Nourishing Hope, says, “He really captured what we do.”
Nourishing Hope opened in 1970 as The People’s Pantry of Lake View. Now, it’s one of Chicago’s largest relief organizations and provides food, mental health and social services to those who need it. It employs more than 60 people and has 7,000 volunteers. The organization opened Sheridan Market, which offers fresh food and social services, in its Sheridan Road home in 2016.
The mural came about, Baum says, after she started wandering neighborhoods during the pandemic, photographing murals and posting them to her Instagram account. As she grew to appreciate and support Chicago’s public art, she realized the wall of Nourishing Hope’s Sheridan Market home was primed for adding one of their own.
For Lewellen it was a homecoming of sorts, as he grew up near the corner of West Addison and North Fremont streets and remembers when the building housed a hip-hop shoe store. The back wall was painted by a New York artist at the time, he says.
Last summer, as he painted the Nourishing Hope mural, titled “Radiating Hope,” the sounds of the trains rumbling by reminded him of being a kid. “It’s a comforting sound for me,” he says.
He says his biggest challenge was making the Nourishing Hope logo look like it was centered within a radial with the “O” in “Hope.” However, the O in Hope is not centered, so the trick was to position the word and the radial to disguise that fact.
Lewellen says he hopes the mural is a “source of inspiration and joy and a nice pop of color for the neighborhood for years to come.”
Alderman Angela Clay, who represents the 46th Ward, says the mural illustrated what Nourishing Hope is known for.
“You never know who’s going to walk through the door, but you know you’re going to serve them,” she says.
Baum says, “I hope it brings joy to you every time you see it.”
