Robert Valadez was working out of his basement when he got a commission from the city of Berwyn, Illinois, for a mural. Valadez had been priced out of studios in his native Pilsen neighborhood and had let the lease run out on his studio in McKinley Park so he could work closer to his aging parents. But now — a new mural. Thankfully, he measured first — even if Valadez had the room to create the painting, he’d never get it out of the basement. So, he posted on Facebook that he was looking for a large space to work and, in a rare instance of social media being social, he received a response from Bridgeport.
Valadez now paints his sizable works on the second floor of the community center at the First Trinity Lutheran Church on 31st Street, just west of Lowe. The space may be too cold in winter and too hot in summer, and there’s the clatter of traffic on the street below, but with abundant natural light and copious square footage, it’s perfect. And not just for such large-scale paintings; at well-over six feet tall, Valadez himself needs the high ceilings. In return, Valadez has painted a series of murals that are hung outside the church as part of a grant to work on anti-hunger advocacy. Many depict Jesus in modern-day food scenarios, while the one I favor shows Jochebed, the mother of Moses, nursing her infant before she sent him up the Nile.
Powerful women figure prominently in Valadez’s work. My first encounter with his art was via a four-foot-wide, six-foot long portrait of an indigenous woman from Chiapas, Mexico, her cerise bandana across her face, save for her soil-colored eyes. Valadez paints Mexican icon Frida Kahlo frequently, both because she is a popular request from patrons and because of the adversity she overcame in her life.
His depictions of those who meet their struggles with dignity and rise above is another reason First Trinity is an appropriate space for Valadez to work. One of the major objectives of the progressive congregation is to help the disenfranchise empower themselves. Full-disclosure: Erika is a member of the church.
“When I first started painting, I didn't have any grand designs on being famous or anything like that,” Valadez told Erika and me. “I viewed art as a way to affect social change, with idealistic and romantic notions of being some sort of participant in something large.”
Valadez has a sonorous voice and his sentences stretch out like a cat waking from a nap. He has long roots in Chicago; his grandfather came here in the 1920’s and worked at a metal foundry, and both sides of his family are from Piedras Negras, Coahuila, just across the river from Eagle Pass, Texas. Valadez knows his mural history, too, and gave us an overview of the movement that started here in the 1960’s with Willam Walker in Bronzeville and was quickly adopted by the Mexican-American community. Lots of murals are being created during the pandemic, he said, especially in Back-of-the-Yards.
It’s in that neighborhood that the city of Chicago is currently beautifying the intersection of Ashland Avenue and 47th Street with new medians, planters and, on the light-poles, banners designed by Valadez. Additional projects keeping him busy are a reimagining of a mural in first painted in Belvidere, Illinois, in 1997, and the restoration for the Chicago Transit Authority of a mural by his late friend Francisco Mendoza.
“I don't know why I gravitated toward towards mural painting,” Valadez told us. “It’s just something resonated with me about the scale, and scale as a medium. You know, doing something large, it adds something to the work. There's something to the way that you interact with it.”
Tune-in TONIGHT to hear Robert Valadez talk to us. Catch Mospratt Street live Fridays between 6:20 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Central Time on Lumpen Radio or 105.5 FM on your radio dial. Episodes are released on our podcast, where you can listen to every episode, later the same night.