Over the course of the late 90s, a dozen or so mysterious artworks sprang up along the streets of West Town. The oblong sculptures–built from pieces of wood, metal, street signs, and other found material–roughly resembled doors, and had been installed on derelict storefronts and construction sites, places more often appropriated for music and movie posters. Most pieces survived a few months at best, although one, near Damen and Chicago, stayed up almost a year.
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Chavez insists he wasn’t too upset that his doors wound up junked or collected. “They lived their life and served their purpose,” he says. “If the space can be used for advertising, why not put art up there? Doors have connotations of possibility and change. I tried to make them look like they were forms that had grown naturally out of the city’s environment and attached themselves to things.” Also, he says, “It was fun–kind of a rush.”
Now 31, Chavez could barely speak English when he moved to Chicago with his family from Mexico in 1985. He picked up the language by reading, watching TV, and hanging out at Foster Beach, and two years later he was enrolled in a gifted-student program at Senn High School. His family eventually settled in Aurora, where Chavez finished high school in 1990, but he moved back to Chicago soon after graduation. He took a few classes at Columbia College and the School of the Art Institute but never got a degree; he credits the art history books at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, where he was an intern from 1991 to ’93, with inspiring him to pursue an activist role as a community artist and educator.
