California-based artist Leah Tumerman livened up this otherwise dreary Roger’s Park underpass at Touhy and Glenwood with this colorful work titled Urban Oasis. The mural combines notable examples of the neighborhood’s landmark buildings (such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Emil Bach House) with whimsical natural elements. Architecture and flora collide as vines, flowers, and ferns burst forth from windows and doors.

This recently completed project in Rogers Park stands at the site of the demolished Heartland Cafe, which served as a restaurant and a center for community-based art, music, and political activism for more than four decades. Artist Amy Couey collaborated with residents and used a paint-by-number layout that allowed the public to participate in the mural’s creation, which celebrates the spirit of the North Side neighborhood on a wooden fence lining the vacant site.

As its name suggests, Carpet is a mosaic designed to be walked upon. Artist Ellen Harvey installed the work in 2007 as a way to bring vibrancy to an inclined ramp leading to and from the Francisco Brown Line stop. The pattern evokes an oriental carpet as a nod to the “artistic and cultural exchange befitting the culturally diverse community surrounding the Francisco station,” according to the CTA.

Lakeview’s Low-Line brings the works of various artists to a pathway created on vacant land beneath the elevated Brown Line tracks. Here, Chicago painters including Lauren Asta and JC Rivera have worked side by side to paint seven new murals. The project is part of a larger push for more public art in the greater Lakeview area.

Spanning 30 by 40 feet, this mural of famed musician, composer, and producer Quincy Jones popped up in Logan Square last summer. Argentinian artist Cobre created the mural to honor the multi-talented EGOT-winner. The painter posted on Instagram that he thought it was “crazy” that some younger people “don’t know who [Quincy Jones] is.”

This now iconic 2017 Wicker Park mural depicting a self-portrait of midcentury Chicago-based urban photographer Vivian Maier isn’t the newest artwork on the list, but was restored last year after getting tagged with graffiti. Renowned Brazilian artist Eduardo Kobra was involved in the repairs, reported Block Club Chicago. Kobra is also behind the multi-story mural of jazz musician Muddy Waters in the Loop, located at the corner of State and Washington streets.

This recent mural from Eric Skotnes transforms a blank wall on Piccolo Sogno Italian restaurant in the Fulton River District at the intersection of Halsted, Grand, and Milwaukee. As with many of the artist’s others works, the vibrant blue and green installation offers a contemporary approach to neoclassical themes. Here, Skotnes draws inspiration from a pair of famous Renaissance sculptures: Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus with the Head of Medusa and Ratto di Proserpina by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

It might be easy to miss this massive 132 by 100-foot mural tucked behind the Chicago Cultural Center, but it is well worth the trip through the alleyway. Rush More is South Side artist Kerry James Marshall’s largest mural to date. Here he highlights 20 women who were instrumental in shaping Chicago’s art, entertainment, political, and cultural stages. Honored individuals include Gwendolyn Brooks, Maggie Daley, Oprah Winfrey, Sandra Cisneros, and Ruth Page. It was completed in late 2017.

This abstract mural brings new life to a blank retaining wall along Harrison Street in the new Southbank Park and riverwalk. Dubbed Riverfront Roots, the piece comes from local artist Ruben Aguirre who graduated from Columbia College Chicago. The mural draws inspiration from its natural surroundings as well as historical events like the straightening of the Chicago River and the Algonquin people who first inhabited the area, Aguirre says.

New York painter Shinique Smith completed this 65-foot-wide mural at the corner of State and 16th streets in 2017. Part of the South Loop’s Wabash Arts Corridor, the dynamic-looking composition features vivid splashes of color, feathers, flowers, and graffiti-inspired graphics. The action centers around a large, handwritten “love.”

The Pilsen community is famous for its murals and has a higher concentration of the art form than any other Chicago neighborhood. While many of the works here touch on cultural and political themes, few are as upfront with their politics as 2009’s Declaration of Immigration by Sal Jimenez. The painting forgoes any depictions of people or places and instead opts for text to get its point across. The piece not only speaks to Pilsen’s current Mexican-American population but its past—when the neighborhood served as a landing place for many European ethnic groups.

This mural in Chinatown’s riverfront Ping Tom Park was vandalized just days before it was scheduled to be completed last year. Undeterred, community members came together and quickly achieved their crowdfunding goal to repair the piece—which has become a popular background for group photos and selfies. The blue and white porcelain chinoiserie-inspired design comes from artists Andy Bellomo, Chester Chow, and Anna Murphy.

Created in 1979 by Mitchell Caton and Calvin Jones, this Bronzeville work was recently restored back to its former glory. The design includes imagery of textile patterns as well as African masks and depictions of the area’s contemporary African-American population. While in the area, be sure to check out The Great Migration, a nearby 1995 mural by Marcus Akinlana which shows scenes from the mass migration of African Americans from the South to northern cities like Chicago after World War II.

A playful cartoon-like mural of “hamburger flowers” lines Paulina Street along a rail viaduct in the Back of the Yards community. The colorful painting comes from Brenda López, and although the artist uses the burger flower in her other works, the characters seem especially appropriate here given the neighborhood’s proximity to Chicago’s former stockyards.

The CTA’s 2019 overhaul of the Garfield Green Line stop in Washington Park provided the ideal canvas for Free/Formal—an eye-catching work of public art by Chicago native Nick Cave. Here, the artist added colorful overhead mosaics featuring birds and flowers. Abstract patterns, also designed by Cave, are repeated on the South Side station’s glass windbreaks and the exterior columns.

In Auburn Gresham, the Great Wall of Chicago stretches 900 feet along an embankment at 87th Street and Vincennes Avenue. Rahmaan Statik completed the South Side project in 2018 to pay homage to local elders as well as raise awareness regarding mental health issues, the artist told Bronzeville Life at the time. The mural was created as part of the city’s 50x50 project which aimed to bring a new work of public art to each of Chicago’s 50 wards.

Another product of the 50x50 initiative, this Far South Side mural comes from painter Jeff Zimmermann. The design sports abstract shapes punctuated by faces, a Chicago style hot dog with all the trimmings, and a heart made of chains—a motif found in some of Zimmermann’s other recent works. The mural wraps around the exterior of the SkyArt center, a building that provides free visual arts programming for young people.