Description
This piece came from the estate of one of the Head Executives of I think most of<br>Asian Motorola which is headquartered out of Chicago where Grace Lai was from.<br>She was most likely flown to Asia, I believe this is the Beijing Building, for<br>this comission. It measures 23"x 30". It was rolled up at one point so I will<br>likely roll it up for shipping but not too tightly unless the buyer has a major<br>objection to that. NO issues with painting.<br><br>Grace Lai painted downtown Chicago in concrete and steel bloom, for two decades<br>producing vibrant montages of skyline-shaping buildings as they climbed.<br><br>An "on-site" artist who didn't seriously take up painting until nearly 60, Mrs.<br>Lai donned a hard hat and was unafraid to board construction elevators for rides<br>high into the sky to complete her work. In winter she'd wrap herself in plastic<br>garbage bags and substitute rubbing alcohol for water in her paints, so they<br>wouldn't freeze.<br><br>"She just really captured the essence of the dynamic nature of construction,"<br>said Tom Broderick, executive director of the Construction Safety Council in<br>Hillside, which has about 100 of Mrs. Lai's paintings on display. "The craft<br>workers will feel the loss of Grace. She really cared about the industry and the<br>people who worked in it."<br><br>Until her husband, Harry, died in 1985, Mrs. Lai was essentially an artist's<br>assistant. He maintained a studio on Kinzie Street in the building that now<br>houses Harry Caray's restaurant, producing signs that graced everything from<br>theater marquees to train stations.<br><br>He was also a fine artist, and on every wedding anniversary, which fell on<br>Valentine's Day, he gave his wife a painting of a rose.<br><br>Mrs. Lai did prep work and handled the books at her husband's business. While<br>she dabbled in drawing and painting, her husband always told her she needed to<br>learn the artist's trick of perspective and made her promise she'd one day go to<br>art school.<br><br>So when he died, she enrolled at the American Academy of Art in Chicago. Each<br>day she took an uncrowded, early morning bus to her classes so she'd have room<br>for her art materials.<br><br>She got off at LaSalle and Adams streets in front of a construction site. With<br>time to kill, she pulled out a pencil and sketched the action.<br><br>"The developers liked it so much they hired her to develop a documentation of<br>the progression of their buildings," her son said.<br><br>Thus the craft of construction became the primary subject of her art. Working in<br>watercolor or pen and ink, she became a familiar sight at construction projects<br>around town. Laborers stopped by to chat with the gregarious artist, asking if<br>they had been sketched in that day, sometimes buying work that bore their<br>likeness.<br><br>In addition to her work on display at the headquarters of the Construction<br>Safety Council, a longtime patron, Mrs. Lai's paintings are part of the<br>corporate collection at BP (formerly Amoco) and Northwestern Memorial Hospital,<br>her son said.<br><br>The daughter of immigrants from the Chinese region of Canton, the former Grace<br>Lee moved frequently in her youth as her family followed her father's various<br>restaurants. She graduated from Schurz High School in Chicago.<br><br>For many years, she was the Sunday school superintendent at Chinese Christian<br>Union Church in Chinatown.<br><br>She kept painting until only recently, working on projects including the Trump<br>Tower.<br><br>"If I lose myself in painting, that's good," she told the Tribune in 2002, still<br>vibrant as she neared 75.
