Grace Lai was perched on a stool next to a fire hydrant near State and Grand the wintry afternoon when I first noticed her. Surround-ed by plastic bags, she looked plump and misshapen in her multiple layers of winter clothing. Strapped securely under her chin was a bright plastic hard hat. On her lap she balanced a sketch pad that boasted a watercolor of the new American Medical Association building under construction across the street from where she sat. She was talented, all right. But I still figured she was loony.
Which is not to say that it’s not cold right now. It’s no more than 30 degrees in this vast unheated space of raw concrete. I’m wearing several layers of clothing topped with a plastic hard hat too. Now I too look like somebody who ought to be pushing
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She took the bus to school every day. After classes, in order to beat the crowds at rush hour, she showed up extra early at the bus stop and waited. Nearby, at the corner of LaSalle and Adams, a building was going up. One day she pulled out a sketch pad.
“How you be?” Lai greets him. He’s tall and solid, with a ruddy, weathered complexion. He peers at her painting over her shoulder. “Nice,” he says.
“No, you’re gonna get Gracie all wet!” the foreman hollers. “Don’t come any farther!”
The things Lai is smiling at today are a far cry from scenes her instructor was referring to during watercolor classes. “We painted barns. And water streams. To tell you the truth, I just can’t get excited over the side of the barn. These buildings communicate with you. You have to walk around and look at them and see what it is, figure out what’s going on.
