Warm up with a mural and coffee on a snowy day on the Southwest Side, where you can stroll a few blocks west of Bridgeport Coffee to take in the colorful artwork by South Loop painter and Mexico City native Cecilia Beaven.
The bright colors illustrate familiar animals and pop out from the surrounding snow in this 15-by-50-foot piece, which covers the entire east wall of Bridgeport Express Laundry at 1103 W. 31st St.
Beaven painted this mural in 2022 with eight students from Yollocalli Arts Reach, the National Museum of Mexican Art’s free programming for teens and young adults in nearby Pilsen and Little Village.
The mural shows animals common in the greater Chicago area — a deer, rabbit, dog and more. But the colors and shapes in the painting make these ordinary creatures feel other-worldly.
“We decided to make it more magical, like a gathering at night,” Beaven says. “Something that’s very important in my practice is mythology. We talk a lot about contemporary mythology and what that means. We wanted to have that mythological scope in the mural.”
The mural’s menagerie includes a lavender rabbit who appears to pop out from behind an indigo dog and land on a pinkish mouse. An orange-and-yellow doe stares straight ahead from the middle of the wall, and a fish looks about ready to leap out of the water from just above the sidewalk.
Green leaves resembling torn pieces of paper on a black background shade the critters from above, and a rush of water appears to fall from the sky.
All of the youth involved in the project came from Mexican-American families, Beaven says, but most were born in the United States. As someone who lives in Chicago but returns often to her Mexico City home, Beaven was eager to teach her students more about their own heritage as they crafted the painting.
“Muralism is very prevalent in Mexico in general, but especially in Mexico City. The colors of the murals are something people are very proud of. It’s a tradition that has carried on since the 1920s, after the Mexican revolution,” Beaven says. “It’s very important for them to know about their culture and the traditions that are theirs, and get comfortable with them and keep carrying them.”
Beaven has an ongoing relationship with the National Museum of Mexican Art in the Lower West Side, and one of her exhibits — Semilla: Cecilia Beaven, Solo Exhibition — is running through March 30. In this exhibit she mixes elements of Aztec mythology and Mexican folk art with various media. She has a companion exhibit, Flickering Cocoon, running at Hyde Park Art Center until April 6. In that exhibit Beaven presents two new murals while reflecting on her journey and evolving art practice while traveling from Mexico to Chicago.
Beaven moved to Chicago from Mexico City in 2017 to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She didn’t plan to stay, she says. “It just happened.”
“I feel like I live in both places now. Chicago always feels like home. But Mexico City is the original home.”