Hello Janesville and welcome back to my public art blog series, this week we’re talking about the “Dancing on the Stars” mural downtown on the Performing Arts Center. The artist behind this mural is Ruben Aguirre, a Chicago based artist who specializes in the intersection of abstraction, formalism, graffiti, and muralism. He made the mural in 2021 Art Infusion.
He draws inspiration from typography, geography, and the human body. He has had exhibits at the Chicago Cultural Center, the Hyde Park Art Center, and has a solo exhibit at The National Museum of Mexican Art coming up. He has done commission work for large corporations such as Google, Adidas, Linked IN, and Conde Nast to name a few.
In this mural, Aguirre wanted to incorporate the Janesville flag, native plant life, and colors that were representative of the landscape. He created an abstract interpretation of the Janesville flag with a tree and 4 suns representing the tree and 4 stars on the flag. He wanted to have a unique interpretation, making the stars suns, as the sun is a star. He also incorporated exaggerated cattails and some other native plant life and painted the background blue to represent the river flowing through Janesville. As a nod to the Performing Arts Center, he added some ballerinas dancing.
If you want to check out more of Aguirre’s work, you can visit his website or Instagram www.theshiftchange.com www.instagram.com/likes_1
If you’d like to hear an interpretation of this piece in his own words, you can check it out here! https://files.idss.com/public/C225/d422668d-d640-4e47-88ab-32c861b56e98.m4a
And of course, be sure to stop and check it out next time you’re downtown!