A Mosaic Artist Brings Fine Art to Chicago's Potholes

Artist Jim Bachor has taken a thousand-year-old art form from the ancient ruins of Italy to Chicago’s streets. He creates mosaics of ice cream sandwiches, tulips, and logo designs from high-end brands like Gucci and Burberry. And he puts them in potholes.

Chicagoans may have come across Bachor before, perhaps bent over a pothole in an orange vest and surrounded by orange traffic cones. That’s because since 2013, Bachor has been going from neighborhood to neighborhood filling potholes with marble and glass mosaics that reflect a dry wit. “This is not a pothole,” reads one of the his works, located in downtown Chicago. In some places, he’s created mosaics of serial numbers to poke fun at the sheer number of potholes throughout the city. His most recent series, from 2015, featured variations on the theme of “Treats in the Streets,” in which he installed pothole mosaics of classic frozen treats.