City Will Not Use Any Art From City Sticker Contest

Caitlin Henehan, Senior, Resurrection High School

The Chicago city sticker contest took another weird turn yesterday after City Clerk Susana Mendoza announced that the design drawn by first runner-up Caitlin Henehan would not be used. Mendoza's office instead will design the sticker in house, which should be ready in time for you to scramble for one at the last minute in July.

Henehan's family informed Mendoza they were withdrawing her design and released a statement that indicated the "unwanted media and public scrutiny and criticism of her artwork" was too much for the Resurrection High School student to handle. Marty and Maria Henehan said in the statement:

“While our daughter truly enjoyed participating in the design contest and was proud to see Chicago select her as the first runner up, what should have been a happy accomplishment in her life has now turned sour.”

Mendoza spokeswoman Kristine Williams said the family reacted to "anonymous criticism" about Caitlin Henehan's artwork, which was supposed to replace the original winning city sticker design of Herbert Pulgar. Pulgar's design was pulled last week after anonymous police blogger "Detective Shaved Longcock" claimed it contained gang symbolism. Mendoza pulled Pulgar's design and said the position of the hands "could be misinterpreted" as gang signs.

Both Pulgar and his art teacher said the position of the hands "Longcock" expertly described as the pitchfork symbol of the Maniac Latin Disciples instead closely resembled a photo Pulgar used as a reference to draw the hands. Mendoza said she would personally buy a $1,000 savings bond for Pulgar, which he would have earned for winning the contest.

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By Chuck Sudo in News on February 12, 2012 1:00 PM 0 Comments

Comments [rss]

oonagh1

The City should just put an end to the art contest. If it doesn't, in the foreseeable future, every year the finalists are announced and the contest is opened to public to vote, this fiasco will become part of the city sticker narrative. As the City Clerk is an elected position, I'm sure Mendoza wants to put this behind her as soon possible and prefer not to have the voters reminded about this incident every year.

The irony of this situation is, with all the national publicity received from this, more people have seen and scrutinized the winning city sticker artwork than if the kid had been allowed to redraw the hands and have the hands photoshopped over the perceived gang signs. That was quite a lot of free publicity for the MLD over the past week.

ChicagoD

"Both Pulgar and his art teacher said the position of the hands "Longcock" expertly described as the pitchfork symbol of the Maniac Latin Disciples instead closely resembled a photo Pulgar used as a reference to draw the hands."

Funny thing. It could be "both" rather than "instead." The reference drawing had models of two hands. One with what looked something like a pitchfork, one without. He only used one of them. So, it COULD be that he did use the model AND he put the banger symbolism in the design. We'll never know. Better to just move and be done with these sorts of contests.

Nicholas

Seems we have two rather different opinions here!

BTFife

They should eliminate the City stickers altogether, then fire all of the incompetents who contributed to this fiasco in the first place. That includes whoever thought of the stupid contest in the first place.

Joseph Finn

This gets more and more ridiculous. Mendoza can buy the kid a savings bond if she likes, but he also deserves the one he won in the contest and his design should be used for the city sticker, no matter what some supposed police officer/white supremacist blogger says.