ROGERS PARK — The seawall at Loyola Beach is getting a fresh paint job this weekend as the annual “Artists of the Wall” festival returns to the neighborhood.
Artists of the Wall will be 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Loyola Park and Beach along the lakefront between Farwell and Morse avenues. This year’s event will see 150 murals painted on the 600-foot-long seawall separating the beach from the park.
The annual Artists of the Wall event will also host live music noon-3:15 p.m. on both days, according to organizers with the Rogers Park Business Alliance and Loyola Park Advisory Council.
A kids’ tent will also provide entertainment, including a performance from the Edgewater-based dance company Synapse Arts at 11 a.m. Saturday.
This year is the 30th anniversary of the festival. The theme is “stories of the wall,” with the new works meant to honor the event’s history in Rogers Park.
Artists of the Wall was first held in 1993, when neighbors organized to do something about the graffiti that was blanketing the seawall at the popular lakefront destination. Neighbors thought the wall would cease to be a target for graffiti taggers if it had art painted by the community.
New murals go up on the wall each year, with over 100 artists and neighbors participating yearly in the project. Murals go up on Fathers Day weekend in early June and remain on the wall until May of the following year, when the wall is primed for the next batch of community murals.
For more on the free event, click here.
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