Chicago murals: Train riders get lost in Union Station art installation while they wait
When Jordan Nickel painted his mural in Union Station in 2024, he thought it would be a temporary installation in the Amtrak waiting area.
Now, Amtrak representatives say they have no plans to take it down.
That’s fine with Nickel, who as a child rode trains as a low-cost way to explore Chicago and the nation and remembers sleeping overnight in train stations.
He’s glad his mural is there for those who are waiting for the train now, experiencing what he called “unique reflection time” that’s both “personal and intimate.”
“Travel changed my life,” says Nickel, who goes by the artist name POSE and lives on the North Side. Amtrak “was my gateway.”
The mural, titled “Accord,” was installed in 2024 and first scheduled to remain through 2025. For the piece, Nickel had to translate his color-bursting, comic-book style into a digital format that could be reproduced as a print on vinyl adhesive and hung on the wall. The original, temporary schedule for the mural and the historic nature of Union Station meant he couldn’t paint directly on the wall, his medium of choice.
The mural features Nickel’s trademark style of comic book meets collage, with bright colors and abstract images pasted together to make something new. A television set seems to have a blue and yellow tiger print on the screen and is running away on Mickey Mouse-esque feet. Female faces gaze in different directions with eyes expressing inquiry or alarm. Paint squeezes out of a tube, orange and purple flowers sprout here and there, and a cord is plugged into an electrical socket — a common image in Nickel’s work. Pieces of words that appear to be from a sign in New York briefly arch over the top center panel.
The composite of color, shapes and letters is enough to captivate those waiting for a delayed train and keep their mind tumbling over it all while they wait.
Nickel says the mural was loosely inspired by a wedding happening at Union Station when he first scouted the space and how the station is a symbol of connection in so many different ways.
It “opened the door to look at where travel takes you, where trains take you, where different corridors of life take you,” he says.
Nickel says he has received more personal phone calls, emails and texts about this mural than any of his other work. It not only resonates with Amtrak riders, but with commuters traveling to and from the suburbs who see it almost every day.
A friend, who'd been struggling, called him one day, Nickels says. "He was feeling a deep sense of longing and separation when he unexpectedly found himself standing in front of my mural in Union Station. He said the mural gave him a spark of hope, of serendipity. Like it was harder to stay stuck in that darkness while standing in front of it.
"What began as one unexpected call has turned into many. His visits to the mural and our conversations have become more frequent, growing deeper and more expansive in ways I didn’t anticipate. In fact, he called me again just this morning — from the mural."
“It did exactly what this whole thing is trying to do in terms of connection,” Nickel says.
The mural hangs directly across from an art installation titled “Reflection Pools Monument" by Chicago artist Chad Kouri. In that one, metallic silver circles are centered in squares and rectangles of bright colors, showing viewers their surroundings back to them. An installation by Caroline Kent, in a different Amtrak waiting area, also will remain.
"Customers, station staff and other patrons enjoy the art," explains Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari.