Folk art across Chicago offers glimpse into pure creativity

This life-size mermaid sculpture now residing south of Oakwood Beach was created in 1986 by self-taught artist Roman Villareal and three friends on a limestone block that once helped protect the lakefront at 39th Street. It’s an exception to the anonymity of most carvings along the lake. (William Swislow/For the Sun-Times)

If you ask someone where to go to see art in Chicago, they will likely direct you to the Art Institute, or perhaps to the Daley Plaza Picasso and its nearby cousin, Alexander Calder’s Flamingo in Federal Plaza.

But to the junkyard at 30th Street and Kedzie? Probably not, even though this extravaganza of hand-painted advertising is one of the city’s most glorious examples of public art. To the thousands of stone carvings that line the Lake Michigan shore? Only a bit less unlikely, despite being the city’s most massive repository of outdoor sculpture.