China has its Great Wall, actually a series of ancient barriers spanning more than 13,000 miles.
But “The Great Wall of Chicago?”
Considerably newer and shorter, the mural that bears that name is still a sight to behold: stretching roughly 900 feet along a railroad retaining wall lining Vincennes Avenue in the South Side’s Auburn Gresham neighborhood near 87th Street.
A number of artists — including Dredske, GAPE ONE and Max Sansing — were involved in the 2018 project, though Rahmaan Statik was the lead artist and creative director.
“The images depicted on the mural are local people from the community and images that represent love, self reflection, better mental health and becoming your higher self,” Statik wrote on Facebook.
Some of the images themselves are now due for a little love. With the wall akin to “a giant flower pot” supporting an earthy embankment, there’s what appears to be “white-like salt coming through” and staining the surface and “creating salt deposits,” Statik says.
“It’s just compromising the paint in a few areas,” he says. “I’m making plans to get up there in the next month or so and restore it.”
He also plans to add a special coating “to add some longevity.
“The neighborhood really likes it,” Statik says. “It’s a landmark for that side of town.”
The mural, which also involved the local alderman and City Hall’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, originally was slated to be 300 feet long but grew significantly.
“A good 85 to 90% of that wall I painted myself,” Statik says. “I painted night and day, around the clock.”
Statik says that, despite the numerous images on the wall, “it’s one gigantic mural. It’s all connected.”
The piece was the largest mural Statik has created.
“It made me very self aware that I was capable of doing more,” he says.
“A lot of the images on that wall were developed originally as studio paintings, and it was the beginning of me sampling my own work and bringing it into a mural,” he says.
The Vincennes Avenue wall extends well beyond the artwork.
“If I had the budget and the time, I would paint more,” Statik says.
