Giant koi pond mural brings art to Chicago's Loop

Okay, so if you haven't seen it yet, and hopefully you did because you were watching because we just showed you a picture of it. It looks really cool. This giant koi pond mural atop a parking garage right here in the Loop. Look at that. It's right there on your screen. So it's one of the first pieces of the cultural stadium, which includes everything from more murals just like this to major infrastructure initiatives as well. So Donald Lisinski with the Cultural Stadium along with the muralist Ryan Tavares both joining us here. You too. Thank you for being here. being here. Thank you for having us. We're excited to share this project. Yeah, absolutely. First off, congrats. I mean, the piece looks fabulous. Let's get everyone watching on the same page right now. Let's start to explain what the cultural stadium is. So I appreciate the opportunity to do that. The Cultural Stadium is building on Chicago's rich arts and cultural foundation. We're bringing together artists and cultural institutions, business leaders and civic partners to transform these underused spaces into new cultural experiences. make downtown radically livable and a place that excites you every day to traverse through. I mean and for Ryan here this is really gorgeous and it's and it's such a fun place you know where we can actually look down on it. How did you get the inspiration for something like this? I mean Donna came to me I'm so very grateful to the cultural stadium for picking me to do this but they asked for a few designs. we kind of settled in on this one and then figured out how to make it happen. And I'm really happy with it. I think it's lovely. It really is. And actually, Ryan, how big is it? Because it's hard to tell from the sky because, you know, when you're looking from up above, everything's big, right? But how big is this mural? It's big. It's 21,000 square feet. So it is very, very large. Some of the fish, I think they're probably about 30 or 40 feet long. No way. How long did it take for you to make something like this? We have been working on it, me and my team, for, it took about 15 days within a month. Okay. And you said team. How many people? I had three helpers with me, and we just were up there every single day that the sun was shining. I was just watching your weather forecast, and I'm so excited for this next week coming up to install more. To install more? What else is coming? I'm actually starting five murals in three different locations today. Oh, wow. Congratulations. Just moving along. But this one is amazing. This one is going to always be close to my heart. It's really beautiful. Thank you. Donna, when we talk about art in Chicago, why does art matter? How do the arts and culture, how is that an economic driver of downtown? So what we know is that for our downtown to grow, we need to attract and retain young, talented people. And what folks are looking for in the places that they live are moments of joy, that there is vibrancy on the street. There's vibrancy from the thousands of people who live above this mural. Ryan has had folks shouting from balconies. We've had folks from the Aon building DM Ryan to see how much they love it. That's a half a mile away. And so when we make downtown radically livable with moments of joy around every corner, we not only have our own residents that we've given a gift to, but we have an economic driver to attract the employers that want those young people that want to live downtown. Yeah, yeah. I mean, people want to be around beauty flat out, right? So Ryan, when people see that work from maybe, I don't know, from their office window or from their apartment building, what do you hope they think when they see it? Because I know you said for you, it's really close to your heart. Yeah, I feel like it's such an honor to be able to create public art for people. And every time I paint something, I get so much love from the community because I've had people say, I like coming to work now. My office has a better view, or someone said that they had just come back in town and it was just installed and it's the new view of their apartment. I mean, there's so many people. I think we were just down there. We kept calling it the fishbowl while we were painting it. But we don't know how many people are watching this happen or how many lives it's affecting, but so many people have reached out. I mean, I am beyond touched at all the love that this mural has gotten already. So yeah, it's just wonderful to be a part of it. And you said you were focused on the forecast, of course. Was there ever a time where you were a little worried? I mean, we have had days of kind of crazy weather, you know, maybe a downpour. Were you ever worried about that? I could probably be a weather forecaster. I am so in tune with what is happening with the weather. So if we knew that it was going to rain at a certain time in the day, we would be like, all right, we're going to go for about this many hours so that we would have dry time and everything worked out. So it's good. Thank you. It was meant to be clearly. You know, Donna, what else can we talk about? Donna, what else is in the works when it comes to creating public art? One of the things that we are very focused on is making sure that downtown is everyone's downtown. And that looks at art at the street level, like this art in the sky, but also the ability of kids and families to come downtown and enjoy it. And we just concluded our summer program where we brought more than 400 kids downtown to have their first time cultural experiences at theaters, at performances, together as a family. so the cultural stadium is this idea that is broader than one project it's many projects and many visions and we look forward to bringing them all to you and sharing them with you and your audience well i'm definitely i'm i'm not an artsy person but i'm an art enthusiast so i love seeing this Donna and Ryan thank you so much for joining us here and we love seeing more more beauty around town we love to see it yay thank you so much thank you