CPS students piece together mural in Museum Campus underpass

The Chicago Public Art Group, a longstanding nonprofit that connects artists with Chicago communities to create quality public art, has pieced together its most recent beautification project, with the help of some hard-working Chicago Public School students. The group teamed with another nonprofit org—After School Matters, which pairs students with professional artists—to deploy the CPS teens. Working together, they recently complete a serene, water-themed mosaic that adds some welcome character to the underpass of Columbus Drive in the Museum Campus.

“The underpass has been a target for tagging in the past,” says CPAG Executive Director, Jon Pounds. “This was an opportunity to transform an already beautiful spot into something more.”

The new 1,500-square-foot mural, Aqua Interlude & Reflection, showcases the unique relationship between Chicagoans and Lake Michigan. Fifty students worked over the course of the summer, piecing together miniature tiles on tables with painstaking attention to detail. The tedious assembly consisted of more than 64 different panels filled with thousands of mini-glass tiles. It was a task the students not only met, but also exceeded.

“The real pleasure in working with the kids was how they invariably showed up before the start time and stayed past the end time,” says Pounds. “It was clear they felt the scale and meaning of the project was compelling to them. “

Bringing mixed-media mosaics, called bricolages, to Chicago underpasses is something of a CPAG specialty. In recent years, the group spearheaded efforts to beautify several Lake Shore Drive pedestrian underpasses on the North Side. (Our colleages at Time Out Chicago wrote about the group's efforts at Bryn Mawr Avenue in 2008 and at Foster Avenue in 2009.) Meanwhile, the After School Matters program has helped create nearly 60 public art pieces in neighborhoods, schools and buildings throughout the city, including a recent design on the iconic Bank of America Chicago Wall adjacent to the Kennedy Expressway.

According to Pounds, the success of the After School Matters program speaks to one thing: “Dedication,” he says. “The dedication of the students. To me, that’s the most impressive part.”

The Aqua Interlude & Reflection mosaic is located at the Columbus Drive pedestrian underpass in Museum Campus, just north of Roosevelt Road.