Chicago murals: Mark McKenzie's art on Avondale's Sleeping Village aims to draw in music lovers

Muralist Mark McKenzie sees the mural on the wall at the Sleeping Village music venue in Avondale as a black-and-white, psychedelic tribute to music.

“It’s a comic-esque visualization of cosmic and universal connection,” says McKenzie of Logan Square, who goes by the artist name Mac Blackout and painted the 100-foot-long, one-story tall mural in 2018.

Eyeballs, noses, feet and hands all seem to explode across the wall in an existential soup. Half the mural features thick black lines on a white background, which shift as you look down the wall to white lines on a black background. Whimsical details include stars, lightning bolts, stripes, the Chicago skyline and more. Still, somehow, the energy of the mural at North Ridgeway and West Belmont avenues guides patrons to the door — which is what McKenzie expected.

“It’s supposed to be very musical and improvised but I have referential elements like hands and noses and eyes flying around,” McKenzie says, noting that “I love to anthropomorphize things.”

Other McKenzie murals also reflect his musical passion. His works have appeared on an alley at Lincoln Hall in Lincoln Park and inside Bric-a-Brac Records in Logan Square, among other locations. His portrait of Herbie Hancock can be found on a wall in Pilsen.

“I’ve done a ton of work all over the city, but the music venues and the record stores are always a special thing,” he says.

McKenzie has two upcoming albums of his own with Chicago record store and label Torn Light Records. One is a solo album due out in January. The other is a trio with McKenzie and musicians Landon Caldwell and Nicholas Yeck-Stauffer on an album titled “Between Infinities,” due out this month.

The black and white design at Sleeping Village almost had a written music quality, with an improvisational feel, McKenzie says. While he typically works with bold and outrageous colors, the muted palette was a better fit for the smaller venue in a quieter neighborhood.

McKenzie says he is inspired by Spanish artist Victor Moscoso, who was one of the first to design the iconic psychedelic band art of the 1960s. His designs grew popular on magazines, billboards and album covers for artists including Hancock and Grateful Dead members Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir.

“I’ve been part of the music community for a long time. Doing stuff with the music community is really important to me,” McKenzie says. "It was awesome to be able to do that. I probably need to go over there and touch it up soon.”

McKenzie’s latest work can be found on Lawrence Avenue at Ravenswood Avenue under the Ravenswood Metra stop, where “Ravenswood Walls of Togetherness” was completed in October.

For that mural, McKenzie says he was inspired by the sense of everyone coming together after the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic: “It’s really a celebration.”