Chicago murals: Friends paint McKinley Park viaduct to prevent future graffiti

Ashley Freda had one overarching goal when she reached out to her friend and muralist who goes by the artist name Ocean: Break the cycle of tagging and painting over and tagging again on the viaduct near her home in McKinley Park.

“This vicious viaduct was getting tagged and buffed within 24 hours. It would happen over and over again,” Freda says. “Sometimes the best way to stop a wall from being erased and tagged over and over again is to make something people want to protect.”

So Freda, whose artist name is Agua Girl, reached out to Ocean, with whom she had collaborated on a mural in West Town. She asked if he’d be interested in doing another. Ocean, who grew up in McKinley Park and adjacent Brighton Park, readily agreed.

“We’re both very much of and from the neighborhood,” he says.

The duo spent two weeks brainstorming, sketching, creating concepts and collecting inspiration. The resulting wall is a two-panel spread under the viaduct at West 35th and South Leavitt streets in McKinley Park. They finished it in 2024 and hope to keep expanding the mural.

“Our neighborhood, they have a real appetite for art, engagement and connection. At times we lack so much here that people don’t even understand how they can participate in street art,” Ocean says.

Added Freda, “being able to activate walls on the South Side is something Ocean and I are constantly trying to participate in.”

The walls are a complete collaboration between the two artists, with flowers native to McKinley Park spread throughout. Ocean painted the fish and the frogs, while Freda added the female faces.

The first panel features an angel fish staring at a feminine face: “It’s very isolated. Who are you and who am I? There’s heaps of complexity,” Ocean says.

But in the second panel, “suddenly you’re in the thick of it, and there’s light everywhere you look and color and saturation.”

“The broad story we’re aiming to tell is the journey of discovery and what can be seen if you stop and take a moment,” he says.

Like, for example, their art.

Freda and Ocean used spray paint to create for the entire mural, they say. While Freda brought her perspective from living nearby, Ocean says painting the mural brought up his memories as a kid in the neighborhood. It’s received a warm welcome from neighbors, they say.

The mural isn’t alone in the viaduct. Other murals honoring the Chicago Park District and Chicago firefighters are on the facing wall across the street, with portions tagged and buffed there, too. A Samurai mural by Chicago artist James Sturnfield is farther down the wall and remains largely intact.

Freda says she plans to continue painting murals around McKinley Park and Bridgeport, South Side neighborhoods she says desperately need them.

The two artists are planning more collaboration murals together. “At the end of the day, it’s like tangled headphones in your pocket,” Ocean says, of their teamwork.