A 125-by-70-foot space was once the blank eastern wall of the Hotel Inter-Continental at 505 N. Michigan Ave. It is blank no more because on Tuesday a guy named Robert Wyland (who prefers, a la Miro, to go simply by his last name) began painting a mural on the wall.
Suspended on scaffolding and painting without grids to guide them, Wyland and his crew painted 10 hours each day and were scheduled to finish the job today.
It will be what Wyland calls a “Whaling Wall,” with life-size paintings of whales, dolphins and other marine life. He started doing this in 1981. He has filled walls around the world with watery scenes.
The point?
“I believe if people see the beauty in nature, they will work to preserve it before it is too late,” Wyland says. “I call what I do the art of saving whales.”
Financed through private donations, corporate sponsors and Wyland, the walls make very good ads for the artist, who annually sells $10 million worth of paintings, prints and watercolors (mugs and sweatshirts too) at 20 galleries in the U.S.
Art critics pan his work but marine experts praise it and him.
The Chicago wall will be his 73rd such creation. Wyland is determined to have completed 100 by the year 2011.
