Avondale Artist Reclaims Butterfly Mural After Taggers Destroy It

A butterfly mural that has drawn photo-taking neighbors to a stretch of Milwaukee Avenue in Avondale for nearly a decade was torn apart by taggers earlier this month, and the artist who painted it has now covered the damage with his own graffiti.

James Jankowiak, a Southwest Side artist, painted the mural, titled "Altered Translation," at 2912 N. Milwaukee Ave. in 2017. It was community-funded and listed on the city's mural registry. This week, Jankowiak returned to the wall and spray-painted his graffiti name, Cas, over the tags that had ruined the piece.

The mural had been hit with graffiti before, according to Lynn Basa, an artist who owns the building where the mural is painted. But the most recent vandalism, spray-painted names known in graffiti culture as a "throw up," was too large and too destructive to patch or restore.

"It was a symbol of our community, about migration and making a metamorphosis, and it was community-organized," Basa said. "That somebody would want to come and write a single person's name over that community's name... it's something I don't understand."

Basa said the mural had become a regular stop for people walking that section of Milwaukee Avenue. She would watch people pause to take pictures in front of it or sit outside the building near the artwork. One woman once painted her body in the mural's colors for a photo shoot in front of it, Basa said.

With the original piece unsalvageable, Jankowiak decided the fastest way to deal with the damage was to paint over the tags himself rather than wait for a formal restoration. He finished the new work this week, documenting it on social media.

"The piece was destroyed, I simply wanted to get rid of the names as quickly as possible," Jankowiak said. "I hadn't made a line with a spray can for two years. I've done three pieces total in the last 12 years. I didn't even make a sketch; I made it up on the spot. This was the only appropriate response."

Previous touch-ups to the mural kept its look close to the original butterfly design. This time, Jankowiak painted over the tags with his own graffiti name instead, writing "Cas" across the space where the vandals had left theirs.

The mural sits along a commercial stretch of Milwaukee Avenue where other murals and painted storefronts also line the block. Listing on the city's mural registry protects murals from being painted over by property owners or developers, but it does not protect them from vandalism, and the registry has no enforcement power against taggers.

Neither Jankowiak nor Basa said they had filed a police report over the vandalism as of this week. It is unclear whether the two people responsible for the tags have been identified.

For now, the wall at 2912 N. Milwaukee Ave. carries Jankowiak's spray-painted response instead of a restored version of the original butterfly artwork. Jankowiak and Basa have not set a timeline for repainting "Altered Translation," and any full restoration would depend on funding and organizing the community effort that built the mural in 2017.