Greetings from Harvey: City Hall mural celebrates diversity and transformation

A family of artists gathers beside Harvey City Hall. The air is warm, and laughter is in the air. Music plays, and they sip wine out of small paper cups. A sprinkle of rain falls, but they don’t rush. It’s a celebration.  

They’re celebrating completing a mural on City Hall’s north wall. Local nonprofit Restoration Ministries commissioned brothers Amoz and Malachi Wright, co-founders of Golden Street, who also created the mural on Restoration Ministries’ Boxing Club. 

Amoz teaches graphic communications just up the street at Thornton, his alma mater. He began the creative process by getting input from his students. Their request: a mural with vibrant colors that welcomes people into Harvey.

Completed in August, the “Wall of Therapy” is an homage to the city’s Black, Latino, and Indian culture and interfaith living. It celebrates history while leaving space to reimagine Harvey’s future — “harmony in motion, […] united by hope, faith, education, and opportunity,” the Wrights said. 

Monarch butterflies symbolize transformation and the courage to pursue new opportunities — a nod to “migration across North America, South America and Mexico” that have shaped Harvey’s Latino community. 

“HARVEY.” Six letters, each with their own story. A couple adorns traditional Mexican garb in the “A.” There is a family seen walking in the “H,” adorning hijabs in a tribute to the city’s Desi Indian residents and Muslim community. Serendipitously, the mural is positioned a stone’s throw away from a masjid and Center for Islamic Teaching and Community Development.

Logistics and challenges

The funding for the project comes from a Creative Placemaking grant via the Cook County Arts Initiative, which aims to integrate “arts, culture and design activities into efforts that strengthen communities.”

Restoration Ministries originally had planned to use the funding elsewhere, said Vice President of Development and Administration Karen Vrdolyak, but switched gears to something with more impact after an expensive project quote. They contacted acting mayor Shirley Drewenski about painting City Hall instead, and “she was all for it.”

The county grant required mural completion by Aug. 31, leaving them with two months following a community input session to incorporate feedback, receive mayoral approval, and paint.

The weather, however, proved difficult. Illinois was battered by storms and a record number of tornadoes, prompting a local disaster proclamation in July. That same month, a heat wave and smoke from Canadian wildfires caused unhealthy air quality in the Chicago area, prompting artists to mask. 

Even then, “[…] once you get in the zone, once you get in the flow, you don’t care too much,” said Harvey native and artist La’Mar Hawkins. “The art, painting is so much therapy, it takes you away from all of that.”

‘Unity in difference’

The project has been a family affair. Golden Street co-founder and Wright brother Ira traveled from California briefly to help with the effort. Amoz and Malachi’s mother, Marguerite Wright is also an artist and worked on the project from start to finish.  Amoz’s wife, Raquel, their daughters, grandmother, uncle, and cousins all came out to help complete the project.

Harvey resident and artist KeVonya Moore , said she felt “like a child again” painting the wall. “It felt like love… It definitely brought people together,” Moore said. “I enjoyed being out here with my friends, which I also view as my family. I was at peace the whole time.”

Evanston-based Maia Faith also assisted, sharing “You have underrepresented people all over that mural, and it just shows all the puzzle pieces coming together… it felt like unity in difference,” Faith said.

Many community members brought food for the artists while they worked, including Ald.  Colby Chapman (2nd), “Chicago P.D.” actor and Harvey native LaRoyce Hawkins — La’Mar’s brother — and several Thornton students. When CITCD co-founder Firoz Vohra heard about the project, he committed to bring them lunch and dinner every day until they finished.

Amoz estimates 100 people, including “almost all the children that live in [Harvey Lofts] have come down here and added paint to the wall,” have contributed in some way.

Honoring Harvey’s past and imaging its future

The wall immortalizes some community members who have passed. Amoz and Malachi’s father, Malik Wright, passed away in 2025. He appears on the farthest left side of the mural. La’Mar Hawkins’s grandfather, titan John Bradley, had also recently passed. He embraces his grandson in the “E.”

The hijabi woman drawing the “H” depicts Shifa Vohra, Harvey native and Calumet Park Police Department officer who died in 2020, Firoz’s daughter. Amoz called it “special, because it feels like she’s drawing her family.” 

Within the “V,” LaRoyce Hawkins painted the class of 2020, throwing their caps in the air in their graduation regalia. Their graduation was virtual because of the pandemic, so the mural depicts “what should have been,” said Amoz. Harvey World, the city’s nickname used by younger generations, makes a subtle appearance, as does the Wildcats Marching Band.

Vrdolyak says the next stage of the project will transform the green space in front of the mural for community gathering. They hope to repurpose a shipping container to create a stage for performances. “We can have landscaping and a sidewalk that goes through…so people can walk through and wheel through, and we’ll have benches and things like that,” she said. 

Now that the project is finished, Malachi is feeling “righteous. Like God is really instructing us to do these things for a peaceful and a Godly reason, to really help and to inspire people in general,” he said. “For the people of Harvey to do all the things that we see on this wall. This image is a reflection of the future for Harvey. The future is bright. The future is vibrant. The future is love.”