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Remembering Muralist William Walker

By Laura M. Browning in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 29, 2011 4:00PM


If you’ve spent any time walking around the South Side, you probably recognize some of William (Bill) Walker’s murals, if not his name. Walker, who died last month at age 84, will be honored tomorrow in a memorial service at the South Side Community Arts Center.

“His life and his work were visionary,” Jon Pounds, executive director of the Chicago Public Arts Group and a friend of Walker’s. A brilliant muralist and activist, Walker helped paint the “Wall of Respect,” once at 43rd and Langley on the South Side, a mural of African American heroes painted in 1967 (it’s since been lost to fire damage, though an online archive of it remains at Northwestern's Block Museum), and he created several murals in Hyde Park, some of which have been renovated (Childhood Is Without Prejudice), and some which have been destroyed in the name of Metra renovations (Justice for Delbert Tibbs).

Walker’s distinctive style was marked not just by his artistry, but by his passion for social justice. Jon Pounds, executive director of the Chicago Public Arts Group and a friend of Walker, told Chicagoist, “[Walker] embodied both pride and concern for African American people and the believe that humanity was a single race. Walker’s studio work and his murals acknowledged that social conditions require each of us to accept personal responsibility for both our individual actions and our collective ideals.”

Walker influenced more than just the art in Chicago. Pounds said, “He inspired me and many others to rethink the relationship of our art-making to the larger world.”

The memorial service will be held at 1pm tomorrow at 3831 S. Michigan. Pounds says it will “provide us a moment to pause and reflect on the world we are creating.”