The viaducts beneath Lake Shore Drive are utilitarian gateways to lakefront neighborhoods, and the glories of our Lake Michigan parks. They are also dark, dirty, and loud. They are the last places one would expect to become points of community pride and pleasure. But the viaduct at Bryn Mawr Avenue has become the neighborhood destination in Edgewater over the last two years. "Living," and "Growing" a pair of bricolage tile mosaic murals were designed and installed in the viaduct by Chicago Public Art Group artists Tracy Van Duinen and Todd Osborne with Cynthia Weiss and a team of youth apprentices from Alternatives Youth Center, an uptown social services agency in 2007 and 2008. The glittering mosaics lining both its walls have become the neighborhood's "Cloud Gate", the must see landmark for the community.
Another bricolage megamural will be created by the same Chicago Public Art Group team, to be installed on the dreary poured concrete walls of the Foster Avenue viaduct this summer, and it is likely to become equally popular. After months of community design and tile-making workshops that drew on local Native American history, over a hundred community volunteers, including many from the Native American community, painted the design outline for the piece on the north and south walls on a beautiful spring night in late May. A team of young apprentices started its installation Monday, June 15. Called "Indian Land Dancing", the piece will be the first major public art in Chicago that honors Native American perspectives and contributions to the city. It will cover some 3,400 square feet.
48th Ward Alderwoman Mary Ann Smith, who championed "Living," has been a prime mover behind the new piece. It was Smith who insisted that the bricolage focus on the Native American experience, and she was among the dozens of volunteers with paintbrushes who slowed traffic while the design was applied. Dorene Wiese, the President of the American Indian Association of Illinois, was there as well. "We've been waiting thirty years for something like this," she said. "Now there will finally be a place we can bring our kids that really reflects our pride." Before the end of summer the Foster viaduct will become a point of pride for the whole city, sparkling and timely evidence of the power of the arts to beautify and build communities.