Results tagged “mural”

   

Local radio station Radio Arte WRTE 90.5 FM - "a Latino-owned, bilingual, youth-driven public radio station" - is reporting this morning that a youth mural supporting immigration on their Pilsen building, shared with youth arts outreach group Yollocalli, was defaced overnight. The mural, based on last year's "A Declaration of Immigration" exhibit at the National Museum of Mexican Art, was defaced with the spray-painted words "LIES" and the phrase "Mexicans Are Racists."

Leave it to a connected alderman to punish someone else for his mistake. With the controversy over Ald. Balcer's painting over of a mural on private property still simmering, the Dept. of Streets and Sanitation may have been directed to fall on the sword in response to backlash from the public. WBEZ has the statement released by Streets & San, which states, "The removal of the mural was a miscommunication between the Alderman’s office and the Department of Streets and Sanitation. The owner of the building should have been notified," and ends with, "The representative of the Department of Streets and Sanitation received disciplinary action."

Artists beware. If you plan to paint anything on your own property that depicts even the slightest vestige of the Chicago Police Department, you run the risk of being brown-washed. At least that’s what happened to well-known Chicago artist and muralist Gabriel Villa Thursday. He received a call that a large-scale, outdoor mural he had been painting in Bridgeport for two weeks had been covered in brown paint - at the insistence of 11th Ward Alderman James Balcer.

A Springfield Jaycees' Haunted House was forced to paint over a mural which included a depiction of Mike Madigan and Gov. Blagojevich strangling each other and GOP VP Candidate Sarah Palin shooting Bullwinkle J. Moose (who was holding a "Joe Biden" sign). This after Illinois Department of Agriculture officials saw the mural which spokesman Jeff Squibb said, "wasn't appropriate for a family event." More legitimate, though, are worries that the mural could be seen as "electioneering on state-owned property." The haunted house is located in a space below the Illinois State Fairgrounds Grandstand. Gary Kessler, who designed the room the mural was in, was nonplussed by the reasoning. "It shows a complete and total lack of any sense of humor. Not family friendly? As opposed to cannibalism, chain saws, axes and body parts?" It just goes to show that even at Halloween, politics is the scariest horror of all. ZING!