A hand emerges from seemingly nowhere, unleashing a blue butterfly as a stream of what appears to be energy leads to several faces clustered among flowers, leaves and more butterflies.
A cloudy haze spirals off from there into the distance.
That’s what’s shown in a sprawling new mural on Chicago’s Near West Side, on the side of a commercial building at 452 N. Morgan St.
What informed the piece? That’s quite a different story.
The Los Angeles artist who completed it over the summer and whose professional name is Ladie One says, “If you see the hand, it’s kind of releasing the butterfly, it turns into this whole beast of a butterfly.”
“Within the whole beast are these three girls I’m known for, it’s kind of my signature style, and they’re like alien girls from another realm that always come with different messages.”
“I channel them through visions and meditation, and they always come with these different uplifting and enlightening messages for I believe human kind.”
“It’s kind of like a puzzle that I have to decode, this is my process how I create these things.”
Her Chicago piece is titled “Metamorphosis,” and she says it “was all about transformation, and just releasing.”
Ladie One, who declines to reveal her real name, painted the mural as part of the Titan Walls festival in August.
It was a kind of homecoming as the artist was raised in the Chicago area until age 12, when she moved to Miami, then later to California.
“Full circle moment for me, coming from there and inviting my family to see me paint live at the wall, it was really cool to see that,” Ladie One says.
This painting is the subject of this week’s ”Murals and Mosaics” feature in the Chicago Sun-Times. Please click here to read more.
While Ladie One’s mural is on the north side of the building, there’s another painting on the south side, done a year earlier by the Spanish artist Sabek.
He tells us his piece “tells a tale of harmony and rivalry.”
“Legend has it that long ago, two mighty bulls, symbolizing strength, resilience and the dualities of life, found themselves magically transported to the heart of the Windy City. Each bull, a guardian of its own territory, stood facing the other, their eyes locked in a silent understanding.”
Sabek adds, “And of course, the whole idea was inspired by the Bulls basketball team.”
There’s nothing nerd-like about the painting shown below, except that it was done by a veteran Chicago street artist who goes by ”Nerd” or “Graffiti Nerd.”
He was among a slew of folks to descend on this viaduct in the summer.
“I wanted to do something that reminded me of the murals I grew up seeing” throughout his neighborhood in the 1980s, Nerd says, and convey “my love for Aztec and Mayan art.”
The piece was done in a Racine Avenue viaduct near 16th Street, in a locale known as a hub of public art activity in Chicago.
We’ve been showcasing the occasional mural from out of town in this space, and the piece shown above is in Kansas City, Mo., with the photo snapped by a friend who had been visiting there and knows of my affinity for public art.
Some funky stuff going on in this piece, and I’ll let the artist Kiptoe explain how it came together with fellow artist Ten Hundred at the SpraySeeMO arts festival in 2021.
“Ten Hundred and I originally were going to paint a separate wall, but the owners did not want us painting during business hours, and there was no room or time for us to paint otherwise,” Kiptoe says. “We went on the hunt for another wall and found this five-story space next to the train tracks.”
“We spent the rest of the day coming up with a sketch on the fly and creating our respective characters interacting with a magical orb. I painted the character on the left, Ten on the right.”
Kiptoe knows something about collaboration.
While in Chicago that same year, he did the piece shown above at 488 N. Milwaukee Ave., west of the Loop, with artist Thomas Turner.
“We were both invited to the mural fest Titan Walls,” Kiptoe says. “We were both given this huge 100-foot wall and asked if we wanted to collaborate together. We had never heard of each other, but liked each other’s work and decided it would be awesome.”
“We went back and forth creating a concept that would work between us, and landed on this mythical scene with beasts and wild imaginary characters, which suits our personal tastes.”
Before we say our goodbyes, I’ll leave you with the image above featuring a Rolling Stones-themed mural we wrote about a few weeks back.
Since the story came out, the artist, Debbie Peterson, changed the caption to give us a little shoutout. Thanks Debbie, very kind of you!
