If you take a walk down the alley of the 1400 block of Thayer, Isabella, and Park Street, you will find yourself interacting with some of the most unique and unlikely displays of public art in Evanston – all painted on garage doors in a deserted alley-turned-renowned-open-air art gallery. Teresa Parod, an Evanston artist, is the creative mastermind behind this series of garage door murals. As an artist, Parod is a jack of all trades. Though her murals have made her well-known in the local community, she also paints, draws, creates mosaics and dances. When she is not being commissioned to do a beautiful garage door design or a mosaic overseas, she teaches art history at Oakton Community College. 

While the idea for a garage door gallery took off during the COVID-19 lockdown, for Parod, public art was something she knew she wanted to pursue ever since a trip to Cuba in 2019. While in a neighborhood in Havana, Parod met with a local artist, José Fuster, who had been trying to beautify a dilapidated area of Havana using mosaics. His goal was to make the entire neighborhood into one continuous mosaic, and Parod hauled over 700 pounds of mosaic tile to Havana to help make this a reality. 

Coming back to the States, Parod adopted Fuster’s belief that public art should uplift and transform the space it inhabits. In her sixties and having never attempted public art on her own, she did not quite know where to start. Parod applied for grant after grant from the city of Evanston and other towns in the Chicago area, but she rarely got offers to paint murals. Seeing her frustration, her son suggested that instead of waiting for approval from the city, she should start by painting their own garage door. Parod contemplated this—after all, the alley behind her house was unused and the garages were dull. This idea of bringing life to a “wasted space,” as she did in the rundown neighborhood in Cuba, excited her. Parod began her mural journey in the summer of 2019, soaking up the last hints of normalcy before the pandemic turned the world upside down. 

On her garage door, she created an image of the front of her house. The door features an illuminated night sky and fantastical trees framing the house, with light streaming through the windows. By the fall, her mural had started to gain attention mainly by word of mouth; neighbors and passersby alike began to reach out to her for their own garage door mural. Soon, she was painting sprawling sunflowers on her neighbor’s garage. Then, an expansive solar system for another neighbor. Next, a New Orleans-inspired cafe a few garages down. By the spring of 2020, walking down the alley on Thayer Street felt like being on the “It’s A Small World” ride at Disney World – each door like a glimpse of the family living in the house. 

Unbeknownst to Parod, her murals would also bring together the community in surprising ways. 

“I started in 2019, but in 2020 is when I really did it,” Parod reflects. “That was during the pandemic, and it was really great because I could paint, I could talk to people, they could be out, we could be at our distance, you could socialize. I tried to bring something positive during the pandemic.” 

The murals were already proving to be more rewarding than waiting around for artist grants from the city, as the only “approval” Parod needed was permission from the owner of the house. According to Parod, her neighbors were more than willing to commission the work. “When I went to all the commissions and all that, I never got anything, but when I just started asking people they were like, ‘oh yeah sure, go ahead!’” she recalled. 

When neighbors commission their garage doors to be painted, Parod first has them peruse her specialty designs on her website. She then asks them what they have in mind as far as subject matter and, from that, combines her style with their idea. Many of the garage door murals are inspired by places the owners of the houses have traveled, by flowers that hold a special meaning or by beloved pets. 

“I think just a little bit of paint can change things,” Parod said, “and you can take this neighborhood, this alley, which is nothing, and make it into a fun place.” 

Walking down the garage door mural gallery with Parod, it was clear that the murals have instilled a deep sense of community among the alley’s households. 

“Our neighbors use the alley now. A lot of people walk up and down that alley, and now it’s not a wasted space,” she told me. 

Indeed, friendly neighbors waved at us, acknowledging the attention I was giving to Parod and her murals. Parod has received no complaints about the murals. In fact, quite the opposite has happened. In the West Village area of Evanston, Parod’s influence can be seen on multiple garage doors sporting colorful, positive imagery. 

When asked if she was aware of her impact, Parod said, “I’d heard one person say they’d painted a garage door that was inspired by me. Wouldn’t that be fun if Evanston was just known for having all these murals? We have plenty of garage doors, so I hope [the murals] inspire people.”

Once I had finished my first lap down the garage gallery, Parod’s husband, Bill Parod, handed me a pair of headphones and instructed me to look through his phone’s camera as he pulled up an app. He works closely with his wife’s art, having created an augmented reality app which, when a phone’s camera is placed on a mural, displays animated graphics and different sound effects relating to the content of the mural. Putting on the headphones, I experienced the murals in a brand new way. When pointing the phone at the mural of sunflowers, animated bees began flying from flower to flower, while bird chirping and other nature sounds filled my ears. 

Parod’s murals have not only let her work with her husband, they have  also allowed her to work on bigger projects, some of them overseas. In 2019, Parod went to New Orleans (the first of three times) to work on mosaics. She collaborated with other artists to create a mosaic that repurposed otherwise-discarded Mardi Gras beads. Two years later, Parod returned to New Orleans to do another mosaic, this time for the Virgin Hotel’s lobby. 

Just one year after her hotel lobby mosaic in New Orleans, Parod got a chance to return to Cuba, the place that kick-started her mural work. She worked with José Fuster again, this time on a wall mosaic of different animals. 

There are other aspects of creating art abroad that Parod finds rewarding, 

“I’ve always traveled a lot, and now that I do projects in places, I’m not just a tourist. I’m there and I have friends in Cuba and friends in New Orleans,” she stated.

Parod’s projects have always been about instilling hope. When she got the opportunity to do a mural in Istanbul, Turkey, she knew that it was going to be important. In early 2023, an earthquake struck Turkey, killing over 50,000 people. Parod decided on a mural with monarch butterflies because they are a symbol of hope and survival. On the mural, a dedication to the people of Istanbul is written in English and Turkish; according to Parod, the message brought passersby to tears as they read it. 

As much as she enjoys traveling to various continents to make art, Parod continues to find it deeply rewarding to make public art at home. In Evanston alone, Parod has painted 40 murals, and most of them in unexpected places. Several have a more personal meaning. On a big wall on Gross Point Road, Parod and her niece, Ani Kramer, worked on a mural of Parod’s late brother, Wesley Kramer. Kramer was also an artist, and an image of him playing a fiddle used for the mural was taken from a print. Parod and her niece wanted to honor Kramer in the best way they knew, which was to continue to make art. 

Parod creates art wherever people call her, and this summer she is taking a trip to Bali, Indonesia, where she will paint a mural in a two-room schoolhouse. The school is much like the other places she has made public art: drab and in need of positivity. Parod does not expect money for the commission. 

“They’re not going to pay me anything. They’re not going to pay for the paint, but my other people help me,” she noted. “People have been very generous, like when I was going to Cuba, some of the people who I did murals for gave me a lot of money to go,” Parod mentioned. “That mural I did over by the train station, they gave me a very generous check which makes it so that I can go to Bali.” 

For garage door murals, Parod only charges expenses, as she sees the mural as a service to the neighborhood. 

“I’m in it to keep my projects going, I’m not in it to make a lot of money,” she expressed.

Completely booked every summer since she began, Parod has painted 80 murals in four years.

 “I don’t know how long I can do them, but I have to say, I think it’s cool that I am 66 and I’m painting murals, because people who are in their twenties and thirties do it.”

 For beginner artists, Parod advises to start thinking outside the box and taking chances. The chance she took ended up being the reason she was able to instill so much positivity into the lives of others.