“In Humboldt Park as it is in Heaven”
Print Shop lead instructor, Songine’ Clarke has been spending time thinking about the phrase from the Lord’s Prayer, “On Earth as it is in Heaven.” The WHOLE earth is broad and hard to wrap our minds around, but what if we zoomed in, all the way to our own neighborhood? What if we could see wherever we live as it is in heaven?
This summer as they decided what a mural on the back of the River City building would contain, she lead her print shop teens through the same thought process: What would it be like if they could see their neighborhood as paradise? This can be hard to do in our community where too much of what we hear and think about West Humboldt Park revolves only around the bad things: violence, drugs, guns, gangs… Too much of our teens’ stories and experiences are impacted by the brokenness around them. But what if we changed our perspective? She asked the teens to share- What’s good here? What do we like about our neighborhood?
The recurring theme of what they loved about their community was it’s diversity- represented on the mural with three flags: Puerto Rican flag, Mexican flag and the Black Liberation flag. They love that their community is not monolithic and all the people coming together is what makes West Humboldt Park great.
They continued by sharing what was paradise meant to them- and being true Chicagoans- it came down to NICE WEATHER! Palm trees and flowers represent their idea of paradise.
As the teens worked through July and into August, they were encouraged by the positive response from our neighbors. Even though the location of the mural is in the alley, everyone in Chicago knows our alleys are our second set of streets and this one in particular behind Grand Boulevard is a particularly busy one. Apartment dwellers in the building behind watched their progress from their balcony, and commented they were glad to have something nice to look at. A Spanish-speaking gentleman walking by shared with one of our teens how touching it was to him to have a representation of all the cultures present in our community.
This summer print shop added a new member as they tackled this project. They experienced all the normal teenage (HUMAN) disagreement, resolution, and learning to care for each other that working on something BIG brings out of us and came out of the summer proud of how hard they worked and seeing their own progress as artists, with founding member Kiaree sharing, “We’re getting really good at this!”
Drive down the alley behind Grand to visit their mural - and check out their Instagram page for photos and videos of their progress.
