Navy Pier features Chicago painter's work honoring her dad, Black history
CHICAGO (CBS) – Through this month, at Chicago's Navy Pier, local African American artists, crafters and entrepreneurs are showing their talents and honoring Black history.
CBS 2 recently caught up with one of the artists whose work is very moving, and very close to home. CBS 2's Suzanne Le Mignot had her story Wednesday night.
"When I'm painting, I feel accomplished, like I'm creating something," said Martha Wade. "Like I'm making something in the world that wasn't there before."
Wade can't remember a time when art wasn't a part of her life, even when she was a little girl watching TV.
"I would pause commercials," she said. "I would pause cartoons and then trace them on the screen."
But as she grew up, she set aside pencils and picked up paint brushes. It was something she loved to do with her dad, the accomplished painter, muralist and educator Eugene Eda Wade.
"I grew up watching my father paint, so I always kind of longed for my own canvas," Wade said. "We had a really close relationship just in terms of being artists and comrades and just talking about art and life."
Eda Wade passed away just shy of two years ago at age 82.
"It's a special bond between a father and a daughter," Wade said. "It's scary when you lose your father, as a woman, it's like that scary feeling of I don't have my dad. Now, I'm grown. I have to really take care of myself."
Today, Wade's on a mission to keep her dad's legacy alive. He lives on in much of her work, including a new collection for Black History Month at the Starbucks Roastery on North Michigan Avenue.
"I wanted to use something that dad and I had created together," she said. "I took the boy and I digitized it. I drew over the whole entire thing and I added other elements my dad would have in his work. We took the background and made a mug. The boy ended up on the tote bag. There's a journal with a couple of coloring pages in it. There's a jean jacket which is pretty cool."
But wait, who is the adorable little boy?
"I painted my son," Wade said. "His likeness."
You can see Wade's son Chris, now 22, and her daughter Jaden, now 19, in several of her works, including a massive four-panel mural called "spirit guides."
"It's like strength, peace, wisdom and courage," she said.
As she paints her family history, Wade also chronicles Black history as a whole.
"Documenting what's going on, feelings right now," she said. "But also as a woman of color, and as a Black woman, and I'm mixed, so I'm Black and white, I like to paint people of color in a positive light to combat the negative stereotypes that we often see and that's been my mission."
Most of all, Wade said she wants her art to bring out the good she sees in the world and she sees a lot of good.
"If you wake up every day and you see certain things on your walls that can get you in a positive mindset of that's who I want to be," she said. "That's what I am. I think art can help us see where we can go."
And what does Wade think her dad would say about where she and her art have gone?
"I know he was proud of me," she said. "He would just say, 'Keep going.' Keep doing what I'm doing. I think he would be happy that I am carrying on his legacy."
Wade said her dad took meticulous notes on all of his work and she's archiving his collection to keep it for all time.
If you want to see more of Wade's art, check out her Instagram @WadeCreate. Her website is WadeCreate.com.
You can also visit Navy Pier's Black Live Artists Studio on weekdays and the Black Makers Market on Saturdays and Sundays through this month.