Welcome!

Hello all, and welcome to this blog! However you have found your way to this site, I am happy to have you here. So let me give you a little introduction into who I am, what I envision this blog to be, and what you can expect in future posts.

My name is Savannah Kinchen. I grew up just outside of Boston, and am currently a junior at Kalamazoo College studying Anthropology and Sociology. I am studying in Chicago for the 2016 fall semester with the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, or ACM. ACM is an experiential learning program that has three parts: an internship, a seminar, and an independent study project. This blog is the product of that third part, the independent study project. Basically my classmates and I are required to conduct a project that can be anything from writing a children’s book to writing an academic paper as long as it has to do with Chicago.

I knew that I didn’t want to write an academic paper, I’ve written my fair share of those, and then some. I wanted to do something creative that would get me out of the house and exploring the city. I just wasn’t sure what.

Early on in our program my classmates and I were taken on a mural tour of the Pilsen, a Mexican-American community in Chicago, by a community member named Luis Tubens, who worked at the National Museum of Mexican Art for ten years. Pilsen is the neighborhood that we are living in for the semester, so I had already spotted a couple murals before we had the official tour; in fact, it’s kind of hard not to see murals when one is in Pilsen.

As we weaved our way through the streets of Pilsen we saw all kinds of murals, all with different purposes, styles, and stories. I found myself transfixed by these painted walls. It was clear that their presence gave the community a sense of identity, pride, and importance. I was fascinated by the stories they told, the people they memorialized, the significance they held. I found myself brimming with questions. Why do artists choose to paint murals instead of just a normal painting to be displayed in a gallery? What is the relationship between murals and the community they are in? What is the process involved with painting a mural? Why did the artist choose to paint this and what is the impact on the community?

As I moved throughout the city going from place to place, I quickly learned that it is not only Pilsen that has murals. These works of art popped up all over the place, like small gems scattered throughout the city. Working off of this admittedly cheesy metaphor, I decided that if murals were gems hidden throughout the city, then I wanted to be a treasure hunter.

In less cheesy and more literal terms, I decided that for my independent study project I wanted to explore different Chicago neighborhoods through murals. For the past several weeks I have been going into different neighborhoods and photographing the murals that I find there. So far, I have gone into Pilsen, Humboldt Park, and Bronzeville. In this blog, I will post my photographs and my reflections on my experience and interpretations of the murals. These reflections could include my thoughts on the murals themselves, observations of the communities that I am going into, self-reflections on how I was feeling being in different spaces, conversations with community members about the mural, articles that were written about the murals I encounter, interviews with Chicago muralists, and more.

Now, in full disclosure, I recognize that I have some serious limitations here. There are thousands of murals in Chicago and nearly one hundred neighborhoods, so while I would ideally love to go to each neighborhood and photograph each mural, there are only so many hours in a day. Also when I go into these neighborhoods it would be very difficult to find and photograph every mural that exists in that community--again, there are only so many hours. Additionally, this is only one out of three commitments that I am attending to this semester, so between classes and going to work, there are only so many opportunities to explore so many neighborhoods. Given these limitations, I have had to be a little strategic.

The neighborhoods that I go into have been chosen because they are areas that are known for having lots of murals. Before going into a neighborhood I usually do a little research on well-known murals in the area and where there is a high concentration of murals within the community. So some of the murals that are featured are ones that I researched and specifically sought out, whereas other ones were just found along the way.

I also want to be sensitive to the fact that I am an outsider coming into these various communities and photographing their art. So if I make a judgement call that it would be insensitive or inappropriate to photograph a mural in that community for whatever reason, that mural will go unphotographed.

All of this is to say that my reflections and interpretations of my experience will be just that, reflections of my experience, rather than claims that what I have found is the absolute truth about murals or the communities they are in. There will undoubtedly be many gaps in my findings--major murals that I didn’t find, neighborhoods that went unexplored, murals that were interpreted in a way that others might disagree with. So rather than this being an academic report with evidence proving social trends, this is more like a reflection on my experience.

One last disclaimer: I in no way assert to be a professional photographer. While I took some photography courses in high school I am definitely far from perfect when it comes to photographing. While I want the photographs I post here to be as clear and aesthetically pleasing as possible, some of them just might not be up to snuff. I would not consider the photographs I post here to be artwork by any means; they merely work to provide visual documentation of my neighborhood explorations. That being said, please forgive any imperfect images.

I hope that this blog can serve to be an interesting way that I can take you along with me on my exploration of Chicago through murals!