Using white chalk on the sidewalk in front of Orrington Plaza, artist Miguel A. Del Real outlined the layout for a colorful flower mural. Some people stopped to watch him work.
“That’s the cool thing about doing public art,” he said. “You never know how people will react.”
Evanston nonprofit organization Art Encounter commissioned Del Real, 40, to produce its very first ground mural — a 50-by-80-foot piece painted with bright, high-contrast hues accessible to the color-blind community. Since green and red can be indistinguishable for people with deutan or proton color vision deficiencies, the palette uses bolder shades to clearly mark the different parts of the mural.
“We want people to feel a sense of wonder and curiosity,” Art Encounter’s Executive Director Lea Pinsky said. “Because the art is created from above, it takes a little bit of a game to figure out what it is. Asphalt art requires interactive movement, which is what makes it special.”
Last summer, Nathan Kostant, Orrington Plaza’s building manager and a Downtown Evanston member, reached out to Art Encounter about ways to transform newly renovated sidewalks on the property.
“Nathan thought [the sidewalk] was a perfect blank canvas,” Pinksy said. “The art is hopefully going to promote more engagement and pedestrian traffic in the area.”
Six community partners, including UL Research Institutes and Hagerty Consulting, are also supporting the project — helping to fund the art and plan it. Together, they chose the artist for the project through a selection process and discussed the design and colors of the piece.
“What I have really loved about this project is how it’s truly a community effort,” Tina Vaughn, UL Research Institutes’ senior manager of community affairs and engagement, said. “The more accessible and collaborative any of our artwork or offerings, the better.”
During a planning meeting in April, Liz Siegel, a managing associate from Hagerty Consulting’s graphics team, proposed the idea to use colors visible for color-blind people in Evanston for the first time. Vibrant fuschias, teals and greens are some of the colors in the piece’s final palette.
“Accessibility has naturally become part of my design process for data visualization,” Siegel said. “Since the mural would be in a public area with heavy traffic, the idea came to mind that we would want a colorful representation that could be viewed by any and all, regardless of color vision differences.”
Art Encounter selected Chicago-based artist Del Real, who has 12 years of experience in street art and specializes in abstract linework illustrations. The design, a large-scale flower, incorporates math concepts like spirals and fractals to create a sense of order and sophistication.
“The team wanted a mural that would be open and loose,” Del Real said. “They didn’t want to limit it to a subjective meaning.”
Del Real is using water-based acrylic paint, which he mixes with sand to make sure it is weatherproof and durable. One of his challenges is the 48-hour shelf life of the paint, meaning that its thickness could reduce its quality if not mixed and used immediately.
“It’s my first time working with this kind of paint so I have to be really conscious when I’m mixing it,” he said. “I’m grating the pigments on the spot.”
The artist began sketching on July 8 and works on the mural daily from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., except Sundays.
“When I’m drawing, I go into a trance,” Del Real said. “I zoom in on the really small details when working, and then I’ll step back to look at the whole thing after a couple of hours and think ‘I really did all that just now?’”
Del Real, most of all, values how murals can become a part of the community.
“I love street art because it includes people,” he said. “Somebody growing up here might see this mural and in the future they’ll think, ‘I saw that mural everyday.’ That sits with a person for years.”
