Chicago Artist Wants Kids to Look Up — Literally — to First Lady Michelle Obama With Mural

CHICAGO, IL — Chris Devins has made a name for himself as an artist for his large, outdoor murals of Common, Chance the Rapper, Louis Armstrong and others that can be seen throughout Chicago.

Now, the Chicago artist wants to paint an outdoor mural of First Lady Michelle Obama on the wall of Bouchet Elementary Math and Science Academy, the South Side school she attended as a child. To make that happen, Devins created a GoFundMe page Nov. 8 to help finance the art.

"The total cost of the mural is $15,000," Devins wrote on the page. "I will match every $1 pledged by the community and raise another $1 from local community organizations and politicians."

But the support for the project has been so overwhelming that he might pay for it with little or no institutional funding, Devins wrote in a note on the page this week. With eight days left as of Thursday, Nov. 17, the page has raised more than $11,000 of the $9,900 goal.

Born Michelle Robinson, Obama is one of three first ladies — along with Betty Ford and Hillary Clinton — to be born in Chicago. She lived in the South Shore, and she attended Whitney Young High School, Chicago's first magnet school, after graduating from Bouchet, then called Bryn Mawr Elementary.

Devins chose Obama as the subject of his next mural for aspirational reasons.

"The purpose of this mural is to give today's children someone they can literally look up to and to celebrate Mrs. Obama's life and accomplishments of the last 8 years as First Lady of the U.S.," he wrote on the page.

Devins will do planning and preliminary work on the mural over the winter. He plans to do the actual painting in March of 2017.

People can still donate to the mural's GoFundMe page. Anyone who gives a donation of $100 or more will receive a signed print of the final mural from the artist.

More via the GoFundMe page

A visualization of what the proposed mural of First Lady Michelle Obama by Chicago artist Chris Devins. (photo via sceen capture of Chris Devins' GoFundMe page)

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