Chicago native Maura Walsh is a visual artist and concert enthusiast. This year she raised $37,000 for local music venues battling the financial hardships of the pandemic with Our Tiny Guide to Chicago’s Best Music Culture Spots, which she created in 2019. She’s also working with nonprofit fundraising initiative Support Chicago Arts to launch Tiny Guide to Chicago Arts, which will help an even wider range of local performance spaces.
Music venues are the kind of places where people could say, “Oh, this isn’t super important right now,” but so many people have lost their jobs, their livelihoods, or their whole lives they put into these businesses. And they’re so important. I remember some lady commented on one of my projects like, “Shouldn’t you be helping build houses for homeless people?” These places get written off as “Oh, they’re just a bar” or “They can put their programs online,” but they’re more than that, and we’re going to lose them if someone doesn’t help.
When I started my first guide, I was trying to figure out, “OK, I want to draw these little places, but how do they fit together?” All of these places make up the whole culture. It was about finding out how they all fit together and letting the architecture of the building find its place in the drawing. There’s no hierarchy, there’s no implied importance, and all these places are literally touching each other and connected; they’re physically supporting each other and Chicago. I’m kind of developing that a little bit more, and I’m working on some secret, exciting new things.
