As James Jankowiak planned his mural for the Chicago Public Library’s West Lawn branch, he knew he wanted to pay tribute to the little person's tavern that once stood on the property.
With an X-acto blade that he also used to create dozens of colorful silhouettes for the mural, he shaped ruby slippers and a soldier to include. That was to recognize actor and tavern founder Parnell St. Aubin, who played a Munchkin soldier in "The Wizard of Oz."
Those were among many neighborhood-flavored characters and figures that Jankowiak, a native of the Southwest Side, included in the 30-foot-long mural titled “Our Collective Catalog / Nuestro Catálogo.” Unveiled in March, it arcs around the curved brick wall in the library’s community room.
“I’m pretty much from the neighborhood,” Jankowiak says of the library branch at 4020 W. 63rd St. in West Lawn. “When I was a youngster, the exciting thing about going to a library was the vast breadth of knowledge at your fingertips. It was a place where I could learn about anything.”
He says he hoped to appeal especially to kids, to give them something that might take them away for a bit from their phones.
“I wanted to create an artwork where, every time they go to the library, they see something different in it,” says Jankowiak, who was hired for the project by the Chicago Public Library and the city's Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.
The mural, which stands seven feet tall, is made of pieces of archival fiberboard laser-cut into the shape of Popsicle sticks and assembled side by side. Jankowiak projected about 200 silhouette images onto paper, used an X-acto blade to cut out each one, traced the silhouettes onto the giant sticks and colored them in with acrylic paint.
“They gave me complete creative control,” says Jankwiak, a former graffiti artist. “I tried to include as many different career paths as possible. Working people, scientists, artists, musicians, athletes — Candace Parker, rookie of the year, Connor Bedard of the Blackhawks. For a baseball player, I used the general stock image of a Little League player.”
The library is offering visitors a do-it-yourself scavenger hunt, Jankowiak says, to search for items and people in the mural.
Jankowiak used a font he designed himself to script the words “La Amada Comunidad,” or "The Beloved Community,” that nestle among the images. The phrase was coined by philosopher and theologian Josiah Royce and popularized by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who marched for equitable housing in nearby Marquette Park and Gage Park.
"It was my guiding principle going into the project," he says, "this idea of giving something to the community that held up this ideal.”
