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Joyful Public Murals Brighten Downtown By Jon McGinty
Editor’s Note: Enjoy a longer version and additional photos in the Winter 2020 edition of Northwest Quarterly Magazine.
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ou may notice more color these days when exploring downtown Rockford. Here’s a rundown on eight new murals and the artists who created them during an event spearheaded by the Rockford Area Convention and Visitors Bureau this past summer. Jenny Mathews Mathews’ artwork is on the alley wall of Wired Café, 416 E. State St., and depicts a huge dandelion scattering its seeds down the alley. “Dandelions are very Midwestern and are free for everyone,” says Mathews. “It was inspired by one of the neatest compliments I ever received. Somebody observing my work once said, ‘If I had three wishes, I’d give you one.’ The dandelions are my gift – my wish – to the city.”
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Mathews and Laura Gomel co-direct 317 Art Collective on Market Street. Lisa and Libbie Frost This mother-daughter team faced a challenging location – 42 pillars under Jefferson Street Bridge, at 299 N. Madison St. “Don’t be afraid to do something big,” Libbie told her mom, Lisa, about the mural they titled “Rockford.” “That became the greatest lesson in all this,” says Lisa. “The symbolism was to illustrate that we’re all a little different, but we come together as one.” Brett Whitacre This self-taught artist from Belvidere lives and works in Sycamore. He was originally invited by the local Audubon Society to produce a bird mural for Rockford to call attention to 389 North American bird species in danger of extinction. His mural is located on the south-facing wall of Rockford MakeSpace, 203 N. Church St. Whitacre chose to paint a Baltimore oriole because of its bright orange coloring
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“I’m a color-blind artist,” admits Whitacre. “Reds and greens are hard for me to distinguish, but orange is easy.” Jenny Ustick and Atalie Gagnet Ustick is a fine arts professor and Foundation Coordinator in the School of Art at the University of Cincinnati. She completed a mural artist residency program in Sicily and began collaborating with Gagnet in 2015. The women wanted to create something special that reflected Rockford’s history and people. “Our focus has been to highlight the incredible accomplishments of some really bad-ass women,” says Ustick. Their research led them to a World War II-era photograph of Libby Gardner, a Rockford native who served in the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots in Texas. Find their mural on the west side of Chocolate by Daniel, 211 E. State St. Molly Z This Chicago-based artist began creatin
