A Legacy of Pattern

We often begin with a dive into art history, mining for threads that can shape a project’s narrative in a meaningful way. For this Chicago property, that exploration led us to the city’s own Chicago Imagists, a group of artists who, in the late 1960s, carved out a distinctly independent voice far from the gravitational pull of New York’s art world.

The Imagists developed a visual language that was both rigorous and exuberant: densely layered patterns, hand-built geometries, and color relationships that seem to pulse with energy. Their work balanced discipline with play, embracing repetition, micro-detail, and a deliberately handmade sensibility that resisted polish in favor of personality.

Though loosely defined, the group coalesced through exhibitions at the Hyde Park Art Center, most notably the Hairy Who exhibitions, where artists rejected convention in favor of personal iconography and a blend of high and low cultural references. The result was a style that felt both a little offbeat and polished, a legacy that continues to shape contemporary pattern-driven abstraction and graphic expression today.

Geoffrey Todd Smith: A Contemporary Extension

To anchor the guestrooms in this lineage, we turned to Geoffrey Todd Smith, a Chicago-based painter whose work carries the Imagist ethos into the present.

A former student of Ray Yoshida, a pivotal figure who influenced both the original Imagists and subsequent generations, Smith creates meticulously constructed abstractions. While his paintings can appear almost digital at first glance, each is painstakingly executed by hand, reflecting a deep commitment to craft and material process.

Smith’s work is defined by a balance of precision and spontaneity. Built through self-imposed constraints of scale, repetition, and time, his compositions invite a kind of quiet introspection. As critic Kevin B. Blake notes, the work suggests not just an image, but a method, an inward gaze shaped through structure and discipline.

Smith’s work is held by major museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, and is widely recognized for pushing this distinctly Chicago tradition into a fresh, contemporary language.

Interpreting the Movement: Local Language Studio

Building on this foundation, our in-house studio at Local Language developed a complimentary series of sculptural works for the guestrooms, designed as a direct dialogue with Smith’s paintings.

Each room features a pair of wood relief sculptures composed of hand-painted, vertically arranged dowels. These pieces draw from the core principles of the Imagists: repetition, pattern, and the power of the handmade. Subtle shifts in color create a quiet optical vibration, echoing the movement’s fascination with visual rhythm and intensity.

The work also nods to key figures within the Imagist circle, modular pattern logic reminiscent of Yoshida, layered geometry, and the kind of chromatic interplay that defined the movement’s most iconic pieces. Translated into a contemporary, architectural form, the sculptures extend the Imagist language beyond the canvas and into the built environment.

Together, the guestroom artworks form a cohesive narrative, one that honors Chicago’s artistic history while reinterpreting it through a modern lens, grounded in craft and detail.