By Aniyha Jones
Medill Reports
Nearly 25 years ago, while on a trip to Pompeii, Jim Bachor discovered mosaics and his life hasn’t been the same since. After years of practice, he’s using his mosaic art to fill potholes around the Chicago area. Although the longevity of his artwork is threatened by the City of Chicago’s Department of Transportation crew, Bachor doesn’t plan to stop anytime soon. This form of artwork is not only solving a problem but also touching the lives of residents all around Chicago.
Transcript:
JIM BACHOR: How legal is this? One, I don’t want to get killed by a car. Two, I don’t want to get arrested. I’m too old for that.
JONES: These were all things Jim Bachor says ran through his mind when he filled his first pothole with mosaic, an idea inspired by a trip to Pompeii.
BACHOR: We were on a tour and the tour guide was showing us around the town, and he pointed out a mosaic and said, “Marble and glass don’t fade so this art looks essentially the way the artist intended 2,000 years ago,” and that thought of permanence blew me away.
JONES: That permanence propelled Bachor to travel to Italy to learn how to make mosaic art.
BACHOR: So I went there. I don’t know, it was a week or a ten-day course on how to do it in the ancient way. Brought that information home and then started doing them as a hobby on the side when I got home from work.
JONES: After years of practice, Bachor had a bright idea.
BACHOR: My neighborhood on the Far Northwest Side of Chicago here, the street was pretty beat up. But there was one pothole in particular in front of the house that was kind of stubborn. It would get fixed. Three months later the asphalt would get popped out.
JONES: He said he knew the perfect solution: mosaic.
BACHOR: It was like 9 o’clock at night in May of 2013, dark out. I’ve got my, I used my boys’ soccer cones as protection — that doesn’t work as it turns out — and I filled that pothole with concrete and I brought my art out and installed it. It kind of goes on from there, but that’s how it started.
JONES: News quickly spread, and various media outlets featured Bachor’s art. Art he says has a purpose.
BACHOR: Everyone hates potholes, doesn’t matter who you are. They’re so relatable. And not always but sometimes my campaigns will be about universal loves like junk food or ice cream or flowers. So I like that contrast there.
JONES: A contrast Bachor took to Pilsen, a Chicago neighborhood known for its art community and no stranger to mosaics.
LUIS TUBENS: The late Francisco Mendoza, who’s known as “El Maestro” or “The Teacher” and he worked with students all throughout the neighborhood of Pilsen on creating mosaics. He creates the ones that are on Jose Clemente Orozco school and there’s mosaics there and he also does the mosaics that are on Cooper Language Academy.
JONES: Tubens says murals are about the community and getting the younger generation involved. The J-Def Peace Project is carrying on that legacy. It was created to honor the life of Jeff Maldonado Jr., a young hip-hop artist in Pilsen, a victim of gun violence and died a day before his 19th birthday. The J-Def Peace Project provides a safe place for teen skill-building through the arts and celebrates Maldonaldo’s creative legacy.
TUBENS: It’s a message to the community that says, “Hey, this life didn’t have to be cut short.”
JONES: The J-Def Peace Project mural is a permanent staple within the Pilsen community, but Bachor’s pothole art is not. In fact, the majority of them have been paved over.
BACHOR: The best-case scenario, they might last 5 years. The best-case scenario doesn’t mean that the art fails, the art is still good, but the streets just get repaved on a regular basis.
AUDREY MATHIS: Specifically, February was particularly productive. CDOT was able to fill more than 93,000 potholes in streets and alleyways which is a 63% increase compared to February of 2023.
JONES: However, this won’t stop Bachor any time soon. Bachor looks to keep fixing potholes around Chicago and seeing his work at his brand-new gallery in Uptown. In Chicago, Aniyha Jones, Medill Reports.
Aniyha Jones is a sports media graduate student at Medill. You can follow her on Twitter at @Niyhaaa__ and connect with her on LinkedIn.
