Graffiti News

A mural with the faces of local teenagers has gone up on the new "cop house" in Roseland, on Chicago's Far South Side. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Pilsen-based artist David Guana designed the piece and students from a nearby charter school painted it. The building, at 12020 S. Indiana Ave., is expected to open this autumn.

What a "cop house" is

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the cop house is an initiative of 9th Ward Alderman Anthony Beale to deter crime in the Calumet District. "Cop" here stands for community-oriented policing. The model comes from a programme in Racine, Wisconsin, that places resource houses in high-crime neighbourhoods. Residents will be able to get to know local law enforcement there and use services such as workforce development training and job readiness programmes. The house is also meant to serve as a gathering place, or simply somewhere quiet to stop for a while.

The building is a two-storey brick house. It is owned by the nonprofit Chicago Neighborhood Initiative, which is developing the project and also provided the grant for the mural.

"Why not my kids?"

The mural started at a planning meeting. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, when promoters suggested getting kids from the neighbourhood to paint it, Dolores Ruiz-Villalvazo, community school coordinator at Chicago International Charter School Prairie, asked: "Why not my kids?" She grew up in Roseland and attended the same school, which sits next to St. Anthony's Catholic Church in the heart of the neighbourhood.

Art teacher Nicholas Pesa then helped recruit students. Most of the teenagers depicted in the finished mural were eighth graders last year.

What residents asked for: their own faces and their own shops

"I'm an artist that really believes [in] real people, real stories," Guana told the Chicago Sun-Times. He spoke with the students and with residents to find out what they wanted. What he heard was "more representation of people like themselves in public art. They wanted to see businesses." They also wanted the tone to be "something positive, something prideful."

The finished mural carries the students' faces along with the face of a beloved former school security guard who recently died. The portraits sit over a map of Roseland, with shout-outs to local businesses such as Old Fashioned Donuts and Shorty's Mexican Grill. Pesa tied the composition together with rainbow arcs of pink, yellow and green.

How it was made

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the group painted the mural with acrylic and spray paints, applied a protective coating, and then mounted it on the north wall of the house. Painting on panels rather than directly on the brick is a practical choice when many hands, including students working from a school, need to share the job.

Donald Higgins, senior project manager at Chicago Neighborhood Initiative, said the organisation is "partnering with the police and neighboring organizations to have this as a space where we can provide programming" such as workforce development, job readiness and trauma services. "It's pretty much a resource for the community," he said.

Why it matters for street art

This is a mural where the community set the brief before the artist drew a line. That is why the wall shows neighbourhood kids and neighbourhood shops rather than a famous face. Opinions will differ about art attached to a policing facility, and Wallscape does not settle that here. What the Sun-Times report makes clear is who decided what went on the wall: the students and the residents.

Community mural programmes exist in most cities, and the Roseland version shows what changes when both the painting and the decision about its content are handed to the people who live there. If you pass the building on Indiana Avenue, you can pin it on the Wallscape map. The feed collects other community-painted walls.

Source: Chicago Sun-Times, "Roseland cop house mural features the neighborhood that teens want to see"