Over the past month a group of artists has added color to the north side of the Harvey City Hall on Broadway Avenue.
After a rain delay Sunday, artists finally tore away the last of the painters’ tape and paper Monday evening and added the final touches to the “Harvey Wall of Therapy.”
The water bill drop box is on the same side of the building, and more than a few people stopped by to take a look at the expansive project.
“I think the city needs it,” said Ashlee Williams, who was walking through the area. Williams said she was born and raised in Harvey.
More than a paint job, the “Harvey Wall of Therapy” is a bright burst of optimism in a downtown that is beset by empty lots, crumbling walls and a storied past. The mural is intended, though, for the future and for the residents still there. It’s a reminder that there’s life left yet in this city.
The wall features a swirling blue and white background topped with painted local characters, the world, homes, wildlife and sunflowers, and with a large square of golden rocks in the middle. The overall effect is to suggest that Harvey is where dreams are made. It suggests, buried within the south suburban community, there is something golden, something rich.
“I feel peace and pride for the community,” Williams said, looking at the painting.
The project was paid for by an arts grant and it comes from the art collective, Golden Street LLC. The group is a family project, started by brothers Amoz, Malachi and Ira Wright, and features the work of their mother, fellow artist Marguerite Wright as well as a handful of other artists brought in to assist. The crew began painting in July and, from the start, Marguerite said the project sparked joy.
“People do love it,” she said. “A lot of people were honking and waving driving past.”
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For Amoz, the wall isn’t his first public mural in the city. He’s also one of the artists responsible for the “Harvey World Wall,” across the street on the side of the Harvey Boxing Club. That mural was paid for by “Chicago P.D.” star LaRoyce Hawkins, who is from Harvey. His brother, Lamar Hawkins, is one of the painters who worked on the “Harvey Wall of Therapy.”
In both projects, he’s inserted local color and familiar faces — including some of his family, but also of some well-known locals. Margarite’s late husband, the brothers’ father, is memorialized inside the E in the word Harvey.
“If you live around here, somebody might stand out to you for sure,” said Lamar Hawkins, one of the painters.
Amoz said the design is also partly inspired by area young people. Last year, he was teaching art in the Thornton Township High School when he got the commission. He asked his students for ideas for the design.
“I asked some of the students and they suggested we put something on there that’s vibrant colorful and welcomes people to Harvey,” he explained.
But if the design came easy, the canvass wasn’t. The wall is mostly flat brick, but near the bottom center, there is about a 5-foot square of rock, some architect’s flair, a touch of texture that interrupts the whole bottom of the wall. It could have been a stumbling block.
Rather, the outcropping, sprayed gold serves as a sort of golden treasure chest, a seat of riches in the heart of Harvey.
“Somebody could have thought of it as a dead end, but it’s a starting point,” Amoz said.
Jesse Wright is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.