I usually won’t send newsletters this often, but I wanted to make sure I put in the plug for the 4th on 53rd Parade (below).
Here are some more images that won’t be in the Herald. One of the reasons I got interested in murals years ago is that I walk by Caryl Yasko’s mural on 55th Street all the time. I’ve long enjoyed checking out her sense of who lived in the neighborhood in the 1970s. I found out that these are not actual individuals except for the image of herself carrying paintbrushes with her daughter strapped to her back.
Apparently, the head scarf was her standard painting gear.
Though not a portrait of an actual person, she did run into trouble when painting the police officer. She had painted the officer as they appeared at the time, with a gun, handcuffs, and club. Two officers stopped by to say she shouldn’t portray them that way. This of course was just four years after the 1968 police riot at the Democratic National Convention. That night, someone came and painted the gear out. Yasko redid it, and the same thing happened. She got the message. I do think that when she rehabbed the mural, she added one recognizable actual person.
In 2015, she came back to rehab the mural. The minute I saw this person, I said, that’s Hanna Holborn Gray, former president of the university. I could be wrong. She had that helmet of grey hair. She might have been in the original, but I like the idea of Gray marching along under the poem.
Both Zeno (painter of the mural on the south wall at 55th Street) and Astrid Fuller assisted Caryl Yasko in 1972. One of the basic research things I do is troll through the online archives on all the search terms I can think of. Sometimes something fun and random shows up. Here’s Astrid Fuller two years before she started doing murals, getting randomly asked a question in the Tribune in 1970. Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. At the time she was asked, the Jane Collective was active in Hyde Park.
One of the things I wanted to share were some of Fuller’s lost murals. The one that makes me saddest since it was in excellent condition is the mural inside her alma mater, the School of Social Administration. The University of Chicago painted it over with white for the anniversary of Mies van der Rohe. There’s a lot to be said about whose art gets valued.
I was fascinated to come across this account of how important a mural can be to someone. Fuller had included the fight for disability access to Mies’s building, which had provided none. It was a protracted battle before the law required it. The article is in The Activist History Review. The authors spotted that Fuller had not only shown people picketing but had included the button defining the cause on the central figure.
Unfortunately, one of the things I discovered is that no one seems to have documented the murals well. So I wanted to share the last remnants of two murals Astrid Fuller did on 60th Street because I haven’t seen any other record of them. On the northeast viaduct wall, she painted “Rebirth.” It seems to have been the destructive forces were humanoid animals and rebirth was family life and education. Here are photos I took as it was being whitewashed away.
It took me a very long time to realize that there had been a mural on the southeast wall of 60th Street. It was called “Chicago Dance, South Side Scene,” which depicted a ballet of conflict and cooperation with buildings as the backdrop. I’ve saturated the colors a bit so hopefully they show up better. There’s a woman on the left facing us dancing, and a man with his back to us lifting a woman in a ballet lift on the right. Her legs stretch to the left, her arms stretched out as she faces to the right.
Outdoor murals are an ephemeral art form, but it seems as though we should at least document them. They are a fascinating part of Hyde Park’s identity.
4th on 53rd Parade
It’s been a long time since I took photos of the Parade, so here’s a recap from 14 years ago. It’s totally worthwhile to march or watch. It’s the neighborhood on parade!
https://trishmorse.blogspot.com/2010/06/all-things-change.html
This year, I’m marching with the Hyde Park Garden Fair, handing out seeds.
Due to a last-minute confusion, I got to march one year just in front of Tammy Duckworth, who couldn’t have been nicer! The politicians are usually in the front.
I’ll be hanging out after the parade at the Disc Golf booth in Nichols Park. Why Disc Golf? Because they let me help write up 18 history signs for the course in Jackson Park. Come say hello!
As always, a wonderful read and full of interesting little items. Thanks!
Hi Patricia, my mom, a lifelong hyde Parker sent me your article. Around 2006 I donated to CPAG a set of slides documenting the HP viaduct murals I took in the late 1980s. Many panels were by then eroded or tagged and some had been partly painted over already. The group may have had their own even better slides from years before I took mine, I can't recall now. If you can't find what you're looking for at CPAG I still have many prints if you'd ever like to see them. leah mayers oldgirlpress@gmail.com