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WEST RIDGE — Four artists are being considered to design a $100,000 art installation at the Budlong Woods Library.
Neighbors voted to allocate ward money for a mural, mosaic or sculpture attached to the east facade of the library, 5630 N. Lincoln Ave., during the 40th Ward’s latest participatory budget process.
In June, the city asked artists on its pre-qualified list to submit a letter of interest for the Budlong project. An advisory panel narrowed down the applicants to four.
These finalists now will submit a design based on feedback from neighbors during a community meeting this week. About $5,000 of the project budget will be used to pay the finalists for this work.
The winner will be announced in late September or early October, said Joanna Goebel, curator of public art with the cultural affairs department. Once the city finalizes its design, the new art could be installed by fall 2022.
Neighbors who want to share their thoughts about the art installation project and the four finalists can email Goebel at Joanna.goebel@cityofchicago.org or Vasquez’s office at info@40thward.org.
Here’s more about the finalists and their work.
Credit: Provided. Hector Duarte
Duarte was born in 1952 in Caurio, Michoacan, Mexico and studied mural painting at the workshop of David Alfaro Siqueiros in 1977.
Since moving to Chicago in 1985, Duarte has helped create more than 50 murals and exhibited his paintings and prints in solo and collective shows at venues like the National Museum of Mexican Art, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the State of Illinois Gallery, the Chicago Historical Society and Casa Estudio Museo Diego Rivera in Mexico.
More information about Duarte and his work can be found here.
Credit: Provided. Lynn Basa
Basa has completed several public art commissions around the country in mosaic, glass, steel, terrazzo and light.
In her studio, she paints with an ancient medium called encaustic, a mix of beeswax and oil pigment. She is the founder of the Milwaukee Avenue Alliance, a community organization dedicated to the equitable cultural and economic reawakening of three blocks of the vintage, working-class main street where her storefront studio is located.
More information about Basa and examples of her work can be found here.
Credit: Provided.Miguel Del Real
Del Real is from Little Village and earned a BFA in printmaking from Northeastern Illinois University. His art can be seen in mural installations in Albany Park, Rogers Park, Logan Square or La Villita, as well as in Brooklyn, New York and Oaxaca City, Mexico.
Del Real also has experience collaborating with other artists and has exhibited fine art drawing, mono-prints, sculpture, and mixed media painting for various solo and group exhibitions around Chicago at Pilsen Outpost, Galerie F, Chicago Truborn and the National Museum of Mexican Art.
More information about Del Real and examples of his work can be found here.
Credit: Provided. Alice Hargrave
Hargrave, a photo-based artist in Chicago, incorporates sound, video and photographic imagery within layered site specific installations.
Recently, The Canary in the Lake, revisualizes climate-related data from lakes on all seven continents. Hargrave studied art and architectural history in Italy, and worked as a photographic artist in France and Spain. She received a fellowship University of Illinois Chicago, where she explored the cusp between abstraction and representation, and the relationship between painting, photography and the sublime.
More information about this artist and examples of her work can be found here.
The new art installation is part of an ongoing effort from Vasquez (40th) to reinvigorate the northern stretch of Lincoln Avenue. The public art would be near the northern tip of the Lincoln Avenue streetscape improvements.
While funding for the new mural is separate from the plan to improve the northern half of Lincoln Avenue’s commercial corridor the leaders of both project leaders are tracking each other’s efforts, said Jessica Peters, Vasquez’s chief of staff.
“Ald. Vasquez, his biggest priority is to make sure that we’re hearing from neighbors and the folks that are directly impacted by this,” Peters said.
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