As the seriousness of the pandemic began sinking in last spring and people began hunkering down for the unforeseeable future, some people began stockpiling necessities. Others started making things.
Some people did both, and even more did neither.
But for those who dove into creative projects, the rewards are starting to show. In some cases, they are contributing to some worthy causes. And some, even, could help us with our holiday gift giving needs.
Take Kristine Condon’s project, a newly published book about public art in Homewood.
It’s a 178-page detailed account of the “world’s largest collection of ‘fool the eye’ murals,” by renowned artist Richard Haas.
“People say, ‘you wrote a book on the Richard Haas murals in Homewood? What’s it called?’ And I tell them, ‘Richard Haas Murals in Homewood.’ It’s not a particularly original title,” Condon said.
“It turned out to be subtitled ‘what I did during the first wave of the pandemic.'”
Besides the 15 works he conceived in Homewood between 1983 and 2014, Haas murals in much more prominent cities, such as New York, St. Louis and Portland, Oregon, decorate the exteriors of much more prominent buildings. That includes the Boston Architectural Center in Boston, Massachusetts, and a 17-story tribute to the work of architect Louis Sullivan coating three sides of a high-rise apartment building on North LaSalle Street in Chicago.
His work in Homewood isn’t quite as prominent. In fact, some people don’t notice the paintings at all because of their lifelike quality and how they blend in with their surroundings.
“He wanted to make them fit in locales, where it would look like they’ve always been there,” Condon said.
In one along Dixie Highway, a 1950s-era Greyhound bus is depicted pulling away from an old fashioned diner that looks inviting enough to draw hungry motorists off the road. Across the street, on a large wall adjacent to an auto repair shop is a depiction of the same sort of business from six decades ago.
Homewood Mayor Rich Hofeld told her about someone who pulled up to the painted Dixie Service Garage looking to get their car repaired.
“There’s lots of stories like that from over the years,” Condon said.
The book, published through Barnes&Noble Press and available at bn.com as well as through the Homewood Historical Society, is a fundraiser for the society, where Condon is a board member. She was brainstorming ideas during a meeting a year and a half ago when she spotted a photo of one of the murals.
“The idea stuck in my head and, because I enjoy that kind of digging, I just started collecting information,” she said. “I gathered a hefty file of materials and decided to make that a pandemic project.”
Fittingly, the book contains its fair share of history, including a look at the long-lost 16th Haas Homewood mural, which once graced the rear of the now-demolished Homewood Theater. It depicted a historical version of the theater, with “It’s a Wonderful Life” listed on the marquee.
That mural was among the first to be installed in Homewood as part of a project to try to draw people back to the village’s downtown area. Several went in around 1983 and ’84, sprucing up the back sides of commercial buildings, decorating the unadorned and formerly unappreciated parking areas behind the downtown’s main shopping area along Ridge Road.
“His initial observation was that there were storefronts and store backs that had stories to tell,” Condon said. “Haas told me that he felt the town’s Main Street was in reverse, with people parking in back and entering the front.”
So many of those early murals gave those back walls the storefront treatment, depicting shop windows and doorway awnings where in reality there are mostly bricks.
A quarter century passed before the next round of murals began appearing around the village, this time in more prominent spots along Dixie Highway and in more front-facing areas of the Ridge Road shopping district.
The new set of murals, installed between 2010 and 2014, continued to tell the evolving story of the village, such as a new depiction of the now gone theater, this time showing “Citizen Kane” and “Gone With the Wind” on the marquee. Another pays tribute to the significant railroad heritage in Homewood, home to what was once the Illinois Central’s Markham Yards rail yard, now a busy hub for Canadian National railroad. And a large mural along Dixie Highway depicts an all-American holiday celebration in the village.
Called “Independence Day,” Condon said it “does a good job of showing the diversity of our neighborhoods.”
“And that’s important to our village,” she said. “When you look at the Independence Day mural, you see all kinds of families and all kinds of people. That’s emblematic of our village and what our village looks like. It’s important for us to see the positive ways in which our village has evolved.”
There are little stories embedded in the details of the murals as well, which Condon relates in her book.
A couple involve furry guest appearances.
“The night before Mr. Haas was to meet with the family that owns Homewood Florist, their dog had passed away,” Condon said. “The dog that is in the Homewood Florist mural is their dog. The dog outside Dixie Service Garage is Mayor Hofeld’s Labrador.”
And on the railroad mural, one of the locomotives has the name Jake inscribed on it. It turns out Thomas Melvin, the artist who actually painted the murals based on the Haas designs, included it at the behest of a nearby merchant.
“He told me the local business owner was watching him painting and said his grandson was a train aficionado, and his name was Jake,” Condon said. “These are the things that are so beneficial when you have people like Haas and Melvin who will share the stories with you.
Even the installation process was unusual, with Haas painting designs at a specific scale of a half-inch equaling one foot.
“When there was a more complex detail, he did one inch to the foot,” Condon said, noting the process is known as maquette. “Then the painter, in this case Mr. Melvin, primes the wall and then executes the design at 24 times the size of the maquette.”
Focusing on Homewood’s Haas murals were a great way to spend the bulk of her 2020, she said, because it’s helping the Homewood Historical Society. They’ll get 100% of the proceeds of the $35 books purchased directly from them.
But it’s also because the murals are deserving of all the attention they can get.
“We have this cool, exciting, unique museum without walls right inside our village limits,” Condon said.
Landmarks is a weekly column by Paul Eisenberg exploring the people, places and things that have left an indelible mark on the Southland. He can be reached at peisenberg@tribpub.com.
