April 17, 2025

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Immortalizing Ideas

Graphic layout alum’s art showcased in downtown Chicago set up

Graphic layout alum’s art showcased in downtown Chicago set up

University PARK, Pa. — Penn Point out graphic structure alumnus Paul Brourman has partnered with Pinstripes, a dining and leisure location, to produce “Chicago Appears to be Very good On You,” a significant-scale, five-piece art installation designed to rejoice the city’s resilience and pleasure in the facial area of hard situations.

The 12-by-16-ft replicas of Brourman’s primary oil on canvas portraits offer Chicagoans or people simply just passing by the restaurant’s downtown locale a playful consider on some of the city’s most legendary landmarks, which include Navy Pier’s “Centennial Wheel,” Buckingham Fountain and “Cloud Gate,” also recognized as “The Bean.”

Brourman was approached in 2020 about a prospective set up on a single of the restaurant’s home windows following the director of advertising and marketing for Pinstripes noticed his portrait of the late Supreme Court docket Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg titled “The Tzaddeket.”

“When I observed the scale of the building’s exterior, I seen there had been in point 7 windows of that size to probably pitch as a notion,” Brourman explained. “The idea was to characteristic 5 whimsical portraits of every day Chicagoans proudly “wearing” the city’s most popular iconic landmarks, and the collection of windows supplied a substantial canvas to shock and interact passersby instantly.”

Pinstripes, housed in just Chicago’s fourth oldest developing, combines Italian and American delicacies with the amusement of bowling and bocce, which informed two additional portraits — a single with a bowling pin concept and 1 with bocce balls worn as a necklace by the portrait’s subject.

About the past 15 years, Brourman’s passion and expertise for creating art has mainly taken a backseat to his placement as main government officer and main imaginative officer at Sponge, a branding and marketing business he launched in 2007 based in Chicago that functions with quite a few significant-profile customers, these as Hyatt, McDonald’s, Blick and Cresa but Brourman said the two worlds are now intersecting extra frequently.

“For me, the past two many years have led to what feels like a watershed second,” Brourman stated. “The trajectory of my art is now as equally energizing and demanding for me as the agency endeavors.”

“Chicago Appears to be Superior on You” was unveiled in June in the course of a ceremony hosted by Dale Schwartz, CEO of Pinstripes. With about 200 folks in attendance, the five replicas of Brourman’s paintings, mounted on the windows of Pinstripes by ER2 Imaging, turned portion of Chicago’s Illinois Avenue cityscape.

Even though the scale and accomplishment of the function is continue to setting in for Brourman, Pinstripes has expressed curiosity in owning him produce comparable works at locations in 12 cities across the U.S., and talks have started with a further city associate to continue the sequence alongside Michigan Avenue.

“Art, design and style and branding are all intersecting in stunning means these previous couple decades,” Brourman said, “and from all signals, it appears it will continue on.” 

The Division of Graphic Style is aspect of the Stuckeman College in the Penn Condition College of Arts and Architecture.