Murals of orange candleflower, Callery pear, kudzu and other plants dot the sides of buildings in the Wicker Park, North Center and other North and West Side neighborhoods. Viewers may be surprised to learn that researchers are behind these paintings, and the plants they depict can have damaging effects on the environment.
The nine murals — completed in October — were commissioned by University of Illinois Chicago’s MEC Lab for macroscale ecology and conservation. They depict well-known invasive plant species or plants threatening to become invaders in the Midwest.
Gabriela Nunez-Mir, director and principal investigator of the MEC Lab, said she hopes the murals raise awareness about invasive species and show their nuance.
“They’re beautiful; they really are,” Nunez-Mir said. “And they can do positive things, but read closely because there’s a lot of negative impacts they can have as well.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture classifies invasive species as a non-native species to an area that is likely to harm the environment, economy or human health. They’re mostly brought to these areas by human activity, albeit often unintentionally.
Nunez-Mir said there are local invaders already well known for their negative impacts, like the zebra and quagga mussels in Lake Michigan that damage infrastructure and disrupt the food chain. However, the lab also researches ways the invasive species may positively affect some small environmental elements, Nunez-Mir said, like how some invasive plant species may act as extra resources for pollinators.
Researchers at the MEC Lab take a data-based approach to understanding invasive plant species, Nunez-Mir explained. They work to identify the “rules of life” that dictate how invaders are able to thrive by assessing many different organisms. Nunez-Mir said she and other researchers hope their findings will lead to predictions about which species will be the next invaders.
In spring 2024, the lab received a $300,000 Biota Award from the Walder Foundation, a Skokie family foundation that funds Chicagoland area environmental research and other initiatives. Nunez-Mir said the grant was used mostly to develop a database of over 1,000 invasive plant species. Researchers evaluated and recorded the same 28 characteristics for each species based on preexisting data from universities and government agencies, Nunez-Mir said.
Sofia Al-Shayeb, a researcher who led the development of the database, said it will soon be available for use after it’s published in the Journal of Ecology. Al-Shayeb hopes its value will be widespread, giving centralized information to anyone from experienced ecologists to interested elementary school classrooms.
“(Invasive species) should be a concern that’s on everybody’s radar,” Al-Shayeb said, adding that they can have domino effects on the environment. She explained an invader plant could outcompete native ones for resources, causing a decrease in biodiversity, which could affect pollinators.
The lab also used the Biota Award to fund the mural project. Nunez-Mir said that she’s been fascinated by Chicago’s art scene since she moved to the city in 2021 and that the art “stays with you emotionally.”
“So I was thinking, ‘How do we make education on invasive species something that is memorable, something that can evoke emotion?” Nunez-Mir said.
The idea for the mural project was then born. Nunez-Mir said she connected with Laura Catherwood, who painted the murals, through one of her favorite galleries, VSG Contemporary in River West.
Catherwood, a longtime Humboldt Park-based artist who recently relocated to New York, said that although she mostly depicts nature in her paintings, receiving a commission from a lab was unusual. By design, education became a big theme of the project, and Catherwood said she deliberately placed her 3-by-4-foot paintings at viewing height.
“I hope it encourages people to notice the things that are growing around them,” Catherwood said.
Each mural is accompanied by a link to the project’s website, which explains its mission and provides background on and pictures of each plant species featured in the murals. Clover McDougall, MEC Lab’s lab manager and a research associate, wrote the descriptions of each species. She said she wanted to make readers comfortable with identifying the species and aware of mitigation efforts.
McDougall said the project provides an accessible way for people to become environmentally active and help prevent the spread of invasive species.
“I think a lot of people in this current day and age are getting a lot more environmentally minded, and they want to help,” she said. “They want to do something that would positively impact the environment. Something that is very achievable is like, if you see an orange candleflower in your backyard, it’d be really super easy to pull it up or dispose of it the way that we describe online.”
