Peek around the alleys in Noble Square off Ashland Avenue, and you’ll find some happy robots waiting to greet you from the side of a residential garage.
Another robot waves from a front door in the 1500 block of West Fry Street.
New York artist Chris RWK painted them when he was in Chicago for a show last summer.
In the alley, six pastel-colored robots peer out from a peach background. A large yellow face takes up much of the panel, while a smaller pink one and taller blue one gather with two gray fellow robots.
Howard Coleman says he commissioned the pieces for his home because, “Who doesn’t like robots?”
He admired Chris RWK’s work and reached out to him, Coleman says. It turned out the artist would be in town and could extend his visit.
Coleman says he admires the robots’ simplicity, but also the nuances that Chris RWK uses to create his images. The shadows and linework are “really much more sophisticated than people think it is.”
In addition, “they’re happy robots. If I met someone who doesn’t like robots, I’d be suspect of that person.”
The robots are images that Chris RWK has been painting for decades, he says, and part of his signature style.
For this specific clan of robots, he envisioned “something bold with a unity theme that catches your eye as you come down that side road there,” he says, referring to Greenview Avenue. “I wanted to do something with a bunch of different robots and different colors, a unity feeling — a ‘we’re all in this together’ kind of thing.”
Meanwhile, a gray robot with a small bird on its shoulder waves from the red front door. Another bird gazes out from a cloud on the adjacent wall.
Chris RWK began creating his robots in the 1990s and early 2000s, he says, with the simple eyes, slouched shoulders and the "X" where a heart would be.
“I wanted the robot to represent the everyday person,” he says, “but also that you can have feelings through him — like how he tries to connect with the animals that I include. He’s trying to learn the human ways. He’s not perfect, just like people.”
While Chris RWK has shown his work in Chicago galleries, this is his first mural in the city. He also painted a wall at Highwood’s International Mural Fest last summer.
Coleman says his love of murals began when he was in college, commuting on the Red Line from Evanston to Columbia College and taking in the murals on the rooftops and by Graceland Cemetery.
Coleman hopes to eventually turn his neighborhood alley walls into an organic art gallery. He built the garage behind his house with an eventual mural in mind, leaving a wide open wall ready for painting, he says. Already, more murals are popping up nearby.
“I’ve spoken with a couple other artists and I'm working with neighbors to add more murals to the alley,” Coleman says. “I’d like to get to the point where it’s completely filled with murals.”
