Riders on the CTA Red Line passing the Sheridan stop can now see something new towering over the tracks: an 80-foot-wide, 26-foot-tall mural of neighbors clasping hands, passing groceries and gathering around a circular table, painted in bursts of bright, concentric circles. The piece, called “Radiating Hope,” covers the back wall of Nourishing Hope's Sheridan Market building at 3945 N. Sheridan Road, and for the artist behind it, the project is something of a homecoming.
Anthony Lewellen, who once tagged walls under the name ANTCK, grew up near the corner of West Addison and North Fremont streets, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. He remembers the building that now houses Nourishing Hope once held a hip-hop shoe store, and that its back wall had previously been painted by a New York artist, per the same report. Lewellen used spray paint to complete the piece last summer, working just across from the Red Line tracks that run directly opposite the three-story wall.
Lewellen's connection to Chicago public art runs deeper than his own neighborhood. As a teenager in May 1989, he was among 500 Chicago Public School students chosen to help pop artist Keith Haring paint a 488-foot mural in Grant Park, an experience he has cited as formative. Haring painted the black outlines across 122 panels while students, including Lewellen, filled them in with color, according to the City of Chicago. He went on to earn a graphic design degree from the American Academy of Art after a decade in advertising, building a portfolio that includes a 2014 Union Pacific viaduct mural in North Mayfair and a 2018 Metra underpass piece in Evanston, as detailed by DNAinfo.
A Logo Puzzle Hidden in Plain Sight
Getting “Radiating Hope” right meant solving a design problem most riders will never notice. The Sun-Times reports that Lewellen faced the challenge of centering the Nourishing Hope logo within a radial design, since the O in HOPE is not actually centered in the wordmark. He positioned the word and the radiating circles around it in a way that disguises the off-center letter, folding a technical flaw into the artwork's composition.
Lewellen has said the rumble of nearby trains is comforting rather than distracting, and he hopes the mural will bring joy and add color to the neighborhood for years to come, according to the same Sun-Times account. West Town gallery Chicago Truborn marked its 13th anniversary with an exhibition of Lewellen's work, according to Chicago Gallery News.
Why Nourishing Hope Wanted a Mural at All
Nourishing Hope CEO Mitzi Baum began photographing neighborhood murals during the pandemic and posting them to her Instagram account, the Sun-Times reports, and it was that habit that led her to recognize the organization's own Sheridan Market wall as available canvas space. Baum said Lewellen captured what Nourishing Hope does, and she has said she hopes the mural brings joy whenever people see it. Ward 46 Alderman Angela Clay, whose district includes the site, said the mural illustrated what Nourishing Hope is known for: serving anyone who walks through its doors.
Nourishing Hope opened in 1970 as the People's Pantry of Lake View and has grown into one of Chicago's largest relief organizations, offering food, mental health and social services with more than 60 employees and roughly 7,000 volunteers, per the Sun-Times. The organization was formerly known as Lakeview Pantry. The Sheridan Market itself opened inside that Sheridan Road building in 2016, offering fresh food alongside social services.
A Mural Backed by a Widening Hunger Gap
The scale of what Nourishing Hope now handles is considerable: the organization distributed more than 6 million pounds of food in 2025. It provides over 4 million meals and assists more than 50,000 Chicagoans annually through its markets, home delivery and online ordering. Inside the Sheridan Market building, the choice-based food pantry sits alongside Nourishing Hope's social-service support. Across the organization, services include help with housing, job placement and free licensed mental health counseling.
The mural's unveiling lands at a fraught moment for hunger relief citywide. A report by the Greater Chicago Food Depository and NORC at the University of Chicago found that 36% of Chicago households—roughly 417,000 households—lack consistent access to food, while 47% of households with children struggle to access enough food, according to WTTW News. Federal policy is also part of the backdrop: legislative cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program were enacted in July 2025.
Against that backdrop, a brightly painted wall along the Red Line reads as more than decoration. Public art groups such as Arts Alive Chicago have noted that large-scale viaduct and transit murals across the city tend to spur community pride, prompting volunteer cleanups and new social connections among neighbors, DNAinfo reported. For Lewellen, who painted alongside Haring's outlines as a teenager, the wall behind Nourishing Hope's market gives that pattern a very personal shape, just blocks from where he grew up.
