(photo by Lee Bey)
The Cabrini Green public housing building at 660 W. Division is coming down.‚ As demolition workers pound the 15-story concrete slab into oblivion, take note of something beside the spectacle of crumbling concrete and the hair-like strands of‚ exposed rebar:
There is color.
Look closely the photo above. Demolition unmasks the building's drab grid-like face, revealing apartments that were painted in bright orange, reds, blues and greens; a Mondrian large-scale and in 3D. I hadn't noticed this until Lisa Lenoir, who was a fashion editor at the Sun-Times during my time at the paper, mentioned it to me a few days ago.
Lisa drew a nice parallel between the predominantly-black Cabrini Green's vividly painted units and the simple and brightly colored homes in Africa and the Caribbean. "We are a diaspora," she said. I think she's on to something:
(photo by Lee Bey)
(photo by Lee Bey)
