2016 Krider Prize for Creativity awarded to mosaic artist Jim Bachor
The 2016 UCDA Foundation Krider Prize for Creativity was awarded to mosaic artist Jim Bachor. Chicago artist Jim Bachor adapts the ancient art form of mosaic and applies it to contemporary life. Working almost 25 years as a designer in advertising helped facilitate this melding of old and new ideas. From junk food to potholes to breakfast cereal, his work permanently locks into mortar unexpected concepts drawn from the present. Harnessing and exploiting the limitations of this indestructible technique, his work surprises the viewer while challenging long-held notions of what a mosaic can be.
Richard Jividen, UCDA Foundation President and Barbara Esmark, UCDA Foundation Krider Prize for Creativity chair presented the award. Barbara said, “This year’s Krider Prize winner has brought an ancient medium into the 21st century. He has brought this art form—stealthily, I might add—into the culture of Chicago. Historically, mosaics gave us the prosaic. The day to day lives of people who lived more than two thousand years before us. And now, our honoree is doing the same. Ancients forms speaking in a modern voice. Showing us how we live, what we eat, what we buy and who we are. Mosaics: Durable in all senses of the word, particularly when filling pot holes in Chicago, and elsewhere.”
Jim Bachor accepted the award at the UCDA Design Conference in San Antonio, Texas, September 24, 2016.