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by Suzanne Hanney
COVER STORY
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StreetWise Vendor Gwendolyn Freeman bikes past the "Anything is Possible" mural at Jewel-Osco, 5516 N. Clark St., just one block north of her regular selling spot in Andersonville. (Kathleen Hinkel photo.) OPPOSITE PAGE: "What You Do Matters" project for the Chicago Community Trust; "Love" mural at the @properties headquarters; The You Are Beautiful store at 3368 N. Elston Ave. in Avondale. (photos provided by you-arebeautiful.com)
ewly moved to Chicago in 2002, Matthew Hoffman experienced a moment of insecurity that led him to create “You Are Beautiful,” (YAB) a positive message he has since spread all over the world via 6.5 million stickers, public art installations and the Oprah Network. More recently, his work has included art around the expressions, “It’s OK Not to be OK,” a collaboration with the Hope For The Day suicide prevention non-profit, and a T-shirt for Giveashi*t to benefit StreetWise that proclaims, “We Are All Equal.” “I was born in Ohio and we moved around a lot in Ohio and Indiana,” Hoffman said in a telephone interview. “I went to school in Indiana, at Ball State for graphic design. We would take the South Shore [train] into the city to go to the museums. I was always seeing that skyline and being blown away by it. I did eventually come to Chicago in 2002 for a publications firm. I was on my own; I didn’t have friends or family. It made it really exciting. I had never been in a larger urban environment before. It was incredible but there was also a lot of chaos, visible noise, audible noise, advertisements I had never experienced, kind of playing on your insecurity. It was also, in my opinion, the golden age of street art. I had seen things online with the message: ‘Be yourself. That’s enough.’ I wanted to make that calming message.” Online printing was unavailable at the time, so Hoffman found a printer who made sticker business cards proclaiming “You are Beautiful” in his now-iconic black type on silver square. “I am all about doing, doing, throwing it out in the world and revising it from there. I had 100 and I put them up all over the place. I was living in Wicker Park and because they were paper, they quickly disappeared because of the rain and the harsh climate. I noticed that on doors of restaurants there were locksmith stickers, warning stickers that you just gloss over. The idea was the silver sticker was designed to blend in, be obtrusive. When it hits you, it’s a little bit of positive.”
