Illinois -Chicago (May 9, 2021)

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So as our previous post mentioned, we left Indiana and now are in Belvidere, Illinois which is about an hour outside Chicago. We will be in the Pine Country RV Campground for two weeks.

To start out our visit, we went to Chicago to look for murals. It was a rainy day so it was a gloomy ride. However, we apparently are with many other “mural hunters”. There were many sites on the web for murals but we decided to start with the “25 Must-See Street Art Murals That Prove Chicago’s Art Scene Is Legendary” from Secret Chicago. We didn’t stop at all of them and found others on the way to many.

One of the first murals we look for is the “Greetings From ” mural. These “Greetings From” mural even has a website : https://www.greetingstour.com/

The Greetings from Chicago mural is without a doubt one of the most recognizable pieces of street art in Illinois. Situated in Logan Square, it was the first official on-the-road ‘postcard mural’ by NYC graffiti artist Victor Ving and Ohio-born photographer Lisa Beggs.

We were disappointed that two of the murals they listed were no longer there so we lost out on seeing these two murals in person:

Andy Warhol reproduction -this was painted over with a new mural
The Last Aztec Emperor – which was painted over by the new building owner with many protests from the community.

Even though we lost out on these two great murals, we were able to find many more. Also, found a new way to show the pictures – side by side. This will reduce you paging and paging down. We hope you like it this way. You can double click on the picture to see it better.

Titan Walls
The Robin Williams shows the late actor and comedian surrounded by blue genies from the Disney movie Aladdin – the character voiced by Williams one of his most famous roles in cinema. The piece is a collaboration between artistic duo Jerkface and Owen Dippie. They completed the mural in 10 days and wrote “we miss you Robin” when they unveiled it on Instagram. 
Great talent of combining artwork by @fatheroskar (Black Lives Matter) and @wizardskull (Snoopy & Woodstock), Logan Square area
The Muddy Waters 
Moose Bubblegum Bubble is now one of the most photographed murals in Chicago.
The Native American Lost In Chicago… Dreamin’ mural is one of two large murals by the French duo Ella & Pitr. 
They had a whole block of these tile pictures.
‘From Bloom to Doom’ depicts two endangered Illinois birds from Illinois – the red-headed woodpecker and the yellow-headed blackbird. They are surrounded by colorful flowers in full bloom.
This was peaking over a tall building.
this mural is “visually, one BIPoC (black, Indigenous and people of color) female individual.
“In Dreams” resembles “the infinite capacity of the human mind and imagination to dream up something beautiful.” This was painted under an overpass.
A short walk down Milwaukee Ave and into Wicker Park lies another of Chicago’s most famed murals, the Vivian Maier mural. Painted in 2017 by São Paulo-born Eduardo Kobra, and facilitated by Beauty and Brawn, it depicts the late Chicago photographer Vivian Maier, whose work only gained notoriety after her death. Falling behind on payments Maier was forced to auction her negatives which years on would become a viral phenomenon and a much-sought-after collector’s item. 
The subject of this stunning mural by Nicole Salgar is Priya Shah – an artist, model, author, social entrepreneur, TEDx Speaker, and the founder of “The Simple Good.”
This is one wall of many that is painted. Many murals on more than 10 walls going down the street. The next three pictures are from some of the walls.
The Bears on Parade located under the Brown Line tracks on Ashland and Roscoe lies one of Lakeview’s newest murals courtesy of Felix Maldonado Jr.
J.C. Rivera’s notorious Bear Champ. The mural of Bear Champ eating a slice of pizza in Wicker Park is a fantastic place to get a photo with something synonymous with the Chicago food scene

That wraps up our day in Chicago Mural Hunting. More from Chicago coming soon.

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