Max Sansing’s ‘Culture is Power’ mural is reborn on the South Side

One of the figurative bright spots of 79th Street is literally bright once more.

Max Sansing’s “Culture is Power” mural across from the Avalon Regal Theater recently was restored and, in a larger sense, reimagined as Sansing fixed years of chipping and fading that resulted largely from Chicago’s weather.

“I pretty much painted it from scratch, to be honest with you,” Sansing says.

The brick wall had to be significantly patched, too.

The new version is similar to the old one and keeps the same theme.

But it has “more flowers and abstracts,” according to Sansing, who says he tried to be ”more contemporary,” in line with his current style.

Robert Herguth / Sun-Times

One sign of that is that there are fewer paint streaks on the faces. “The face paint is something I moved away from,” the artist says. “Without knowing, to be honest, I think I kind of replaced it by doing the color waves” on “the cheek areas of some of my portraits.

“With those designs, they’re more of an aesthetic feature and less of a symbolic nature. I think it’s more of me just playing with how color combinations can convey emotions when placed on a portrait. I’m leaving it up to the viewer at that point.”

The mural, at 79th Street and East End Avenue, conveys a sense of the power and importance of the family.

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Sansing says he’s contemplated “what do we do to start to turn things around” in troubled communities.

“It starts with the family,” he says. “As long as the family’s strong, the neighborhood is strong. As long as the neighborhood is strong, the community is strong.”

Of the people portrayed in the mural, he says, “It’s a family but more so people who belong in roles of a family dynamic — a strong female presence, a strong male presence, the children, the elders.”

The woman in the center of the painting wears a shirt bearing the words “Culture is Power.” Sansing says he was trying to get across that “our culture is our wealth.”

He says there’s also “a darker nature” to the artwork as many people have family members who’ve had personal troubles with drugs or crime.

“The piece is also speaking toward them,” he says. “They’re part of a family, too.”

Sansing, who grew up in Avalon Park on the South Side, has stayed busy the past few months beyond the mural restoration on 79th Street, which he wrapped up in early October.

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In September, he completed a mural in St. Paul, Minnesota, that shows a young boy “resting and taking in a sunset while nature begins to grow and flow through him.”

In an essay about that piece titled “The Magic Hour,” Sansing writes: “When I was a kid I would sit on my front porch after school and draw till the sun went down, in those moments I found that I was my most creative self in that time of day. I still draw upon this energy till this day and it’s become a source of inspiration for me to keep growing as an artist.”

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In August, Sansing painted a mural on the Special Olympics Montana offices in Great Falls, Montana, that “emphasizes the emotional and spiritual transaction between athletes and volunteers.”

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In May, he visited Hawaii, where he painted a mural at a school, featuring plants, lava and the image of a girl.

“The whole wall is kind of like a cycle of growth,” he says. “It’s a hodgepodge of things, but it’s all kind of connected.”

Click on the map below for a selection of Chicago-area murals