The Western Illinois Museum is pleased to announce that Tanner Woodford, artist and founder/director of the Design Museum of Chicago, will create a mural for the Museum building’s north façade. The project will begin on August 16th and take a week to complete. The public is invited to an unveiling celebration on Saturday, August 21st from 6:00 to 9:00 pm. The artist will be on hand.
Tanner Woodford was born in Macomb, Illinois, and graduated from Macomb High School in 2004. He interned at the Western Illinois Museum when he was in high school. Recently he re-connected with the Museum and the mural project was developed. Tanner received a Bachelor of Science in Design from Arizona State University in 2009 and is currently the executive director of the Design Museum of Chicago. In 2020, he was appointed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot to the City of Chicago’s Cultural Advisory Council. As an artist, he paints optimistic, typographic, and larger-than-life murals. His work has appeared at the WNDR Museum, Soho House Chicago, and is permanently installed at Weber Shandwick in the John Hancock Building. He describes himself as happy to be scrappy, irrepressibly optimistic, and he believes design has the capacity to fundamentally improve the human condition.
Acrylic on Weathered Concrete, 2018
~60×25’
The 10 by 12-foot mural will be created on the north façade of the Museum’s building, located at 201 South Lafayette Street in Downtown Macomb. Tanner is well-known for his expressive, typographic murals, and for this project, he will use the phrase “What You Feed Will Grow” in elongated letterforms. This new work will complement a new agricultural exhibit that will be installed in the Museum’s north gallery and will be visible through large windows adjacent to the mural. Tanner’s mural, with a visual message that is timeless, as well as relevant to our community, will be a welcome addition to Macomb’s growing public art collection.
A public unveiling party will be held Saturday, August 21st from 6:00 to 9:00 pm and will include live music by The Ivas John Band. Local food trucks, a cash bar, and tours of the Museum will be available during the event. There is a suggested $5 donation at the gate.
The mural is supported by a grant from the Performing Arts Society that is dedicated to advancing arts programming at Western Illinois University and in the Macomb community. The project is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Art Council Agency and the Two Rivers Arts Council.
The Western Illinois Museum is located at 201 South Lafayette Street, one block south of Macomb’s Courthouse Square. For more information, contact the museum at 309.837.2750, send a text to 309.837.2613, or email at info@wimuseum.org.
About Tanner Woodford
Tanner Woodford is the founder and executive director of the Design Museum of Chicago. As an artist, he paints optimistic, typographic, and larger-than-life murals. His work has appeared at the WNDR Museum, Soho House Chicago, and is permanently installed at Weber Shandwick in the John Hancock Building.
In 2020, Tanner was appointed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot to the City of Chicago’s Cultural Advisory Council. As a designer, educator, and entrepreneur, he has taught, lectured, and led workshops on design issues, social change, and design history in classrooms and at conferences.
Tanner received a Bachelor of Science in Design from Arizona State University in 2009 and returned to teach in 2010. More recently, he teaches Design Thinking For Social Change at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is happy to be scrappy, irrepressibly optimistic, and believes design has the capacity to fundamentally improve the human condition.
For more information, visit Tanner’s website at https://www.tannerwoodford.com/.