CHICAGO — Tanager George is a traveling artist.
The 29-year-old grew up in California and is now working in Southeast Asia, where he’s spent the last two months painstakingly crafting a detailed, image-like illustration of the Loop.
Some Chicagoans online say they’ve even spotted their apartment buildings in George’s artwork.
The funny thing is, George hasn’t been to Chicago.
“I did change planes at O’Hare on United [Airlines] like a long time ago,” George said. “I’ve always wanted to go to Chicago but just have never had a reason, never had an excuse to go. I know a lot about it, just never been.”
Despite never setting foot in the Loop, George said he spent hundreds of hours studying maps and images of the city, growing familiar with its buildings, streets and railways virtually. It’s available for viewing on his Instagram, @citiesillustrated. He’s also said he enjoyed listening to a lot of “Knowledge Fight,” a podcast by former stand-up comedians Dan Friesen and Jordan Holmes, who are based in Chicago.
Chicago Tribune reporter Jake Sheridan shared images of the 3D map on social media platform X (formerly Twitter) Friday after finding it on Reddit. The post has garnered 3,800 likes and more than 162,000 views.
George said he’s riding the high right now, and his phone was “getting blown up” with orders Friday morning.
The Chicago map is listed for $54 on his online Etsy shop, alongside a variety of other downtown cityscapes, from Toronto to Singapore to Sydney. Find them here.
It took George about two months to complete the map of Chicago, he said. He worked on it for five to six hours most days, but he said he doesn’t like to think too much about that.
“I worry that if I keep track of [the time], it’ll just mess with my creative process,” he said. “In other words, I don’t even want to know how much I spent on this.”
Although George has a vast knowledge of urban areas and countless hand-drawn illustrations of them, he didn’t grow up in a city. He’s from a small town in northern California near Mount Shasta.
“It’s a very beautiful place,” he said. “It was a small town, and as beautiful as it was, I never really wanted to live there for the rest of my life.”
George said he’s always loved traveling and living in cities. He’s spent some time around Los Angeles, Boston and Seoul, South Korea, and he says Chicago might be a place he visits at some point.
For now, George doesn’t really have a “home base.” He’s currently in Thailand and planning to travel around Southeast Asia, although he hopes to settle down somewhere in the U.S. eventually.
It’s All About The Trains
Beyond the beauty and detail of George’s maps, George said his main goal is to showcase urban railway systems like Chicago’s “L” and Metra, which have always fascinated him.
When making his map projects, George spends the majority of his time making the actual cityscape. But he said his favorite part, which takes two or three days, is creating the transit layer that outlines the city’s railway system.
George said he’s a fan of and advocate for public transportation and transit-oriented development, which is the idea that real estate gets its value based on its proximity to public transit, he said.
“So, around the Morgan Station [at 958 W. Lake St.], there’s a bunch of new mid-rise, pretty nice-looking buildings,” George explained. “They are there because the Morgan station is right there, so that is where they get their value.”
George said Chicago’s map is reminiscent of Melbourne’s, which he re-created a while back. In both cities, the original transit systems were built around bringing people to central downtown areas.
“The current network was built around bringing people into the Loop,” he said. “It was all about bringing people into offices downtown.”
Before putting himself on Chicago’s map, George said he worked on a variety of other illustrations, taught English in South Korea and published a children’s book while he was there. That was his first foray into a career in art, he said.
The book, published in 2019, is called “City Land” and features vivid, colorful illustrations of machines, buildings and people you can find in a metropolis. A digital version of the book is available for $2.99 on Amazon.
One of the reasons George initially put so much effort into his map illustrations was to build up his portfolio and perhaps one day go back to art school with financial aid, which he said still isn’t off the table.
In the meantime, George has developed his own signature style of art, using about ten different software programs to create each map. He said he wants to lead a masterclass all about it one day.
“I can’t do this forever; someone else needs to take the reins at some point,” he said.
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