Artist Ahmad Lee captures Rogers Park and its neighboring communities on Getir’s storefront.
Artist Ahmad Lee captures Rogers Park and its neighboring communities on Getir’s storefront.
Getir, a grocery delivery company, revealed a storefront mural painted by artist Ahmad Lee in partnership with Paint The City to highlight Rogers Park’s essence and to build community.
Getir offers a quick 10-15 minute delivery service for groceries and other goods. They offer services in Chicago, Boston and New York. The availability of products are consumer-driven, they focus on preserving consumer satisfaction, according to Getir’s website.
Nico Probst, head of government relations at Getir and a Loyola alum, said Getir partnered with Paint the City — an organization created in June 2020 to support local artists — to localize the store within the community and make their presence known.
“We had a lot of ideas on how to use the storefront as a space to give back to the community,” Probst said. “And as we started talking to them [Paint the City], it just made sense that they would have the ability to take our storefront and make it a vibrant part of the Rogers Park community.”
Lee and Missy Perkins, co-founder of Paint the City, said the organization is an artist-led nonprofit and their goal with these collaborations is to expand the city’s awareness of local artists from different parts of Chicago.
“Obviously these collaborations are a great opportunity for the artists we work with from the city and then just exposing those artists to different communities and neighborhoods who may not be familiar with their work,” Perkins said.
Lee said his inspiration behind the mural not only covers Rogers Park but neighboring communities as well.
“When we talked about setting up the design it was more about showing just the city and the color and the vibrancy and also what Getir offers,” Lee said.
Although Lee is originally from the south side of Chicago, he said he is able to capture the spirit of the Rogers Park community through relationships he has in the area.
“I have friends in the community all the way from here to Evanston, so I’ve been through here a lot,” Lee said.
Maria Hadden, Alderwoman of the 49th ward, was at the reveal and gave a speech in which she commemorated Getir’s job of including the community on their storefront and the job opportunities it opened up for nearby residents.
“This is beautiful,” Hadden said. “It’s wonderful to see beautification on our street, it’s wonderful to see new businesses in our neighborhoods.”
Michelle Spencer, store manager of Getir’s Rogers Park location, said she was surprised when she finally got to see the mural for the first time because it happened “overnight”.
“It was kind of like a surprise, it was really nice,” Spencer said. “The artist kind of surprised us; kept it to himself until he put it up.”
Spencer said the other Getir stores have a “uniform” storefront and she was expecting something similar until she saw it the morning of.
Featured image by Samantha Martinez | The Phoenix
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