Art and eyesores: Joliet murals under review

A Joliet Arts Commission subcommittee in the coming months will try to decide what’s art and what’s an eyesore.

The subcommittee decided Thursday to begin a survey of the public murals around Joliet to determine what should be salvaged, what’s beyond repair, and what should be improved.

The public mural movement that flourished in Joliet 20 years ago has left some lasting art, but some has been weathered to the point that the scenes they depict are barely recognizable amid peeling and chipped paint.

“We have to understand what’s good and what’s bad,” Eric Gorder said at the Arts Incubation Subcommittee meeting Thursday. “We have to be able to say, ‘That’s rust and bolts, and this wall is falling apart. We can’t fix that.’”

Gorder is a member of the four-member subcommittee that plans to begin photographing the murals around town to make a recommendation on what should be done with them.

It’s a process likely to take most of 2021 before a recommendation would be made, and any recommendation would go to the City Council for approval before action could be taken.

The subcommittee last week also began seeking public opinion and did receive several comments through a form posted on the city website, joliet.gov, for suggestions.

Recommendations could include removing, repairing “or maybe even reimagining them,” subcommittee Chairman Quinn Adamowski said. He suggested a new generation of artists could be inspired to create digitized murals.

There was some agreement among the subcommittee members that, as Gorder put it, the murals around town are “way too much the same.”

Subcommittee member Deborah Summers, however, cautioned against judging the older murals too quickly.

“People get an emotional attachment, especially in the neighborhoods,” Summers said. “We have to be very consistent with whatever criteria we use so people don’t think we removed it because we didn’t like it.”

The murals in most disrepair in the city were painted under the railroad viaducts just west of DuPage Medical Group Field. Depicting some of the local sports legends in the City of Champions, the murals have deteriorated to the point that the heroes they portray are peeling away from the wall and in many cases unrecognizable.

Fans headed to Slammers games under the Van Buren Street viaduct pass by a depiction of legendary Coach Gordie Gillespie that is peeling away because of water erosion. The problem is that water continually leaks into the viaducts, eroding the paint of the murals and leaving rusty streaks on the walls.

Dante DiBartolo, an artist hired by the city to repair some public art, said the mural under the Jefferson Street viaduct is in the worst shape.

Some of the city’s deteriorating murals can be restored, DiBartolo said.

“Some of the murals,” he added, “are in such bad shape, you can’t do anything with them.”