UPTOWN — A local artist who’s known for filling potholes with thoughtful mosaics is opening a gallery in Uptown this weekend.
The grand opening of Jim Bachor’s gallery, 1111 W. Lawrence Ave., is 5-8 p.m. Saturday. Bachor plans to use the gallery as a workspace and showroom that features “an onslaught of what [his] art is all about,” including original mosaics, more than 90 prints, T-shirts and puzzles. He also hopes to eventually teach mosaic workshops there.
“I’ll mostly be in the back area of the studio, breaking up marble and glass, working on pieces and whatnot, and I’ll be able to greet the folks that happen to stop in,” Bachor said.
Local business development organization Uptown United partnered with Bachor to open the gallery.
Uptown United is one of 15 community groups to receive funds through the city’s small business storefront activation program that aims to boost local business districts.
After using the grant to secure two leases for businesses that will open later this year, a landlord decided to donate a third storefront to Bachor because he loves the artist’s mosaics, said Justin Weidl, Uptown United’s director of neighborhood services.
A few years ago, Bachor was hit by a “tsunami” of projects when he began filling city potholes with small mosaics. He’s since filled more than 100 potholes in Chicago, his hometown of Detroit and across the world with images of everything from hot sauce packets to tiny replicas of famous paintings to the Chicago flag.
In the early days of the pandemic, Bachor created pothole mosaics of toilet paper, hand sanitizer, masks and alcohol to comment on “what we glorified in those days,” Bachor said.
“With the potholes, it’s like a 24-hour gallery. It’s always open and anybody can see it,” Bachor said. “They’re kind of like Easter eggs in the sense that folks, whether they know my work or not, stumble across a piece. I call them unexpected grins.”
People took such an interest in his public art pieces that Bachor didn’t have time to work on other projects, so he’s looking forward to returning to a studio to create fine art.
Bachor has been using ancient Italian techniques to craft mosaics for nearly 25 years. He’s “on a mission to drag the art form into the 21st century,” Bachor said. He wants to help Chicagoans think of mosaics in a more contemporary way by immortalizing modern images with marble, glass and concrete.
“Lots of people think of mosaics as crafty, and their subject matter tends to be the same,” Bachor said. “But I try to have fun with it and let my personality and dry humor show through my work, whether it’s making fun of people loving coffee and junk food or spending crazy amounts of time doing mosaics of garbage.
“I like the idea of somebody looking at a mosaic of a Big Mac or something, like 500 years from now. I like that there’s the potential I’ll still be speaking to people way after I’m gone. Mosaics give a tremendous amount of staying power to whatever message I’m trying to impart.”
Bachor was drawn to the “durability” of mosaics when he visited Pompeii in the late ’90s. He learned the art “essentially looks the way the artist intended” because the materials don’t fade, even after hundreds of years.
“The permanence of the art form blew me away,” Bachor said. “What really got me going is that I could capture a thought that was just mine, even if it was some ridiculous take on whatever, and it has the potential to survive long after I’m gone.”
In the early 2000s, Bachor returned to Italy to learn ancient techniques for making mosaics, which very few people in the United States practice because it can be “tedious and expensive,” Bachor said.
There are a lot of constraints associated with making mosaics, Bachor said. For example, painters can mix paints to get the color they need, but the glass Bachor uses in his mosaics only comes in certain shades. Similarly, the marble that Bachor uses often can’t be replicated. If he buys a few square feet of marble one day, he can rarely find the exact same shade in stores the next week.
Still, Bachor said the unique end results and the time-consuming nature of the projects are therapeutic, especially since so many people have come to enjoy them.
“I moan a lot about mosaic art because it’s really difficult and frustrating and expensive, but that’s what I like about it, too,” Bachor said. “There’s tremendous satisfaction in the finished piece. More recently, people have really started to like my work, and it keeps me going to see that people are engaged in what I’m doing.”
To see more of Bachor’s art, visit his website.
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