The Broken Heart had more info about the mural on the Morse El, which proves I didn't dig deep enough, although I was on the right track. DevCorp North definitely talked up the project in the Summer 2007 journal.
According to DevCorp North:
This exciting project is a partnership with the Chicago Public Art Group and has the support of 49th Ward Alderman Joe Moore. Carl Lingenfelter, CTA Chairman Carol Brown’s chief of staff, has been attending the planning meetings. Lingenfelter, who lives in Rogers Park, is giving his support and will be including the mural proposal in an upcoming CTA Board meeting agenda.
The artists were selected by the Chicago Public Art Group. The group works on community projects with community input and participation. So, DevCorp North is moving forward on its projects and the definition of 'local artist' is subject to local interpretation. Which leads me to Marcy Sperry's comments, courtesy of Craig and The Broken Heart. She is right on the mark, so I suspect 'Muralgate' is over.
3 comments:
muralgate- I love it! I feel a little sheepish I didn't look further, but I wanted to support a fellow blogger's crusade and didn't have alot of time to check...oh well.
Kheris, I respectfully disagree that it's over. While Marcy Sperry wrote that there is "a bigger picture" than this one mural, I would say that the mural is symptomatic of the ruling of Rogers Park by whim and fiat. To ignore the mural would be akin to ignoring the symptom of a disease. While the disease must be treated, so must the symptoms. As Marcy herself points out, there are empty storefronts, and another mural is just a lame attempt to divert the peasants from seeing the problems. Do we ignore each of these individual problems because "there is a bigger picture?" One doesn't want to miss the forest for the trees, but we cannot forget that the forest is, after all, a big group of single trees. Please see http://rogersparkbench.blogspot.com/2007/06/pain-of-public-art.html
Just home now, and saw that post at RPB at lunch but could not respond. In view of Marcy's comments, my take on the mural is that it is the equivalent of cleaning up the patient so she'll look nice for the visitors passing through the ward. It isn't substantive in that it doesn't address exactly what you, and Marcy, referred to -- empty storefronts. The patient is seeing some positive changes (Common Cup and Andy McGhee's project to mention the ones I know about) but much remains to be done before we pronounce the patient well. Do we focus on the cleanup job (the mural) or do we focus on the illness that manifests itself via empty storefronts?
Mind, I don't disagree with what you are saying about the mural being a distraction. But even Marcy pointed out that the focus of the complaints(local artists or not) was the wrong thing to emphasize. I do think we needed to do a better job from the get-go tying the mural to an overall message about community input, or lack thereof. Maybe that's the phrasing that is missing here, since the DevCorp North document keeps bringing up working with the community. Just how do they define 'the community'?
Again, I don't disagree with you, but I do think we are each approaching this differently, and with some effort our approaches would converge.
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