‘We Deserve To Have Great Things’

GREATER GRAND CROSSING —Three murals encouraging light, love and vitality are on display across the South Side, and the local artists behind the work hope it’s the start of a bustling public arts corridor stretching from Cottage Grove to King Drive. 

Artists, public officials, community organizers and Chicago’s first poet laureate gathered under the Thursday sun to celebrate the debut of two murals and the restoration of one 2,750-square-foot piece. 

The three pieces — by artists and friends Pugs Atomz, Damon Lamar Reed and Joe “Cujodah” Nelson — comprise the Greater Grand Crossing Project, which is aimed at boosting community pride and encouraging local engagement in the arts.

Atomz, a Greater Grand Crossing resident and Englewood Arts Collective co-founder, received financial support from the Boston Foundation and the city’s Neighborhood Access Program for the project. The Chicago Public Art Group, a nonprofit that engages artists and communities in producing art, helped Atomz apply for the Neighborhood Access Program grant.

Atomz’s mural, a striking purple, pink and white design, is on the exterior of the Gyrls In The H.O.O.D. Reproductive Health Services Center, 605 E. 71st St. 

Reed’s painting, an ode to nurturing food and positivity, adorns the exterior of ChiFresh Kitchen, 400 E. 71st St. 

And nearly a decade after creating it, Nelson returned to revitalize his 2,750-square-foot “Greater Grand” mural at Cottage Grove and 71st Street. Nelson enlisted friends and artists to help repaint his sketches of Black history makers like Jesse Owens, Lorraine Hansberry and Ernie Banks. 

The three pieces are the beginning of a movement Atomz hopes will bring murals to every block from Cottage Grove to King Drive, he said. He’s signed every mural with his Instagram handle for artists to connect.

“This is just a small portion of what’s possible, but if you take this, multiply it and spread it out, it builds culture, it builds unity, it builds us,” Nelson said.

Atomz, Reed and Nelson met with neighbors, ChiFresh Kitchen, Gyrls In The H.O.O.D., and the Park Manor Neighbors Association before beginning work on their murals, they said. 

In Reed’s meeting with ChiFresh Kitchen, leaders at the co-op went over their mission of hiring formerly incarcerated folks and providing thousands of freshly cooked meals to feed the community. They wanted a mural that would “show their journey,” Reed said. 

Reed wanted the mural to be art, not an advertisement, while still speaking to the hope the group instills in the community, he said. 

He merged vibrant shades of purple, pink, green and yellow to depict young faces devouring words of inspiration. One corner of the mural features ChiFresh Kitchen co-owner Sarah Stadtfeld and her flurry of tattoos. 

“I wanted to speak about food for the soul,” Reed said. “We added some unity, hope, peace and love for the neighborhood. We compared those things to how food is good for the soul. This is the kind of food that we really need around here.” 

Ald. William Hall (6th), whose ward includes the co-op, grew up watching the 71st Street building go from “something to nothing,” he said.

“Art is a language, whether it’s music or words, that is the silent soul of a community,” Hall said. “Our hope and prayer is that everybody that comes to this corner may see something that touches their soul.” 

Atomz had always dreamed of painting a mural on the wall at 605 E. 71st St., he said. 

He walked into the building one day and told Gyrls In The H.O.O.D. founder Chez Smith he wanted to add a free mural to the facade — unaware of Smith’s organization and her plans to transform the long-vacant building into a resource center, Atomz said. 

He stopped by over the next few months to watch the work the organization was doing in the community, he said. Neighbors began to share testimonials about how much of an asset Smith’s work had become to the community. People can visit the center for period products, hygiene supplies, counseling, hot breakfast, free groceries, clothes and more.

When it came time to paint, Atomz “wanted to add art that matched that asset,” he said. 

He added a shot of track and field star Sha’Carri Richardson sprinting across the finish line and a graduate smiling broadly. Across the top of the mural in purple bubble letters is the message, “You Got This.” 

“Our mission is to help girls redefine negative stereotypes placed on them based on their zip code, and you guys’ work brought our mission to life,” Smith said Thursday. “I get chills thinking about how the girls must feel traveling back and forth to school or going to work and looking at that and seeing themselves positively depicted in the community in which they reside.”

The original plan was to add a new third mural to the community, but Park Manor Neighborhood Association members instead asked Nelson to “breathe a little life” back into the nearly 3,000-square-foot mural he first painted in 2015, he said.

The “Greater Grand” mural, one of the largest Nelson has painted, had become a landmark in the community. 

“The fact that people said they wanted that to be there, that it matters, makes me feel good,” Nelson said. “It makes me feel like I’m doing something right.”

Nelson, Pugz and a group of artist friends added new shades of paint to the mural of “neighborhood heroes,” Nelson said. They all signed it at the end. 

“I want people to look at it and say, ‘Lorraine Hansberry was over here. She walked these same streets I walked, and if she could do it, I could do it,’” Nelson said. “I want people to know you’re not any different from historic people and legends of Chicago and around the world.

“Hopefully, after they see it, more people embrace art out here. We’re trying to put more artwork out here so more people can get exposed to it. It should be part of our everyday life. We deserve to have great things.”

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