Each window contained the faces of 9 of the US soldiers who died in Iraq. Altogether, the piece showed the faces of 648 of the troops as a tribute and reminder. The installation remained installed until 2014 when the US officially withdrew from Iraq.

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“A seminal site-specific piece for me was the Façade Project, which I created in the summer of 2004. At the time I was the studio manager for the Chicago Printmakers Collaborative which was located on the first floor of a warehouse building on Chicago's west side. Since the top three floors of the building were empty, the opportunity arose to do an installation in the building in response to the Iraq war and the upcoming presidential election. Given that I personally knew a number of people who had joined the military, I felt strongly that I wanted it to be respectful to the soldiers. I also wanted to create something that instead of being divisive was a point of commonality.

At that time there weren't any photos of the dead being shown in the news, and the images of the war itself were all aerial and somewhat unreal- so the war felt very abstract to me. I started thinking about the people I knew who had joined the military and got out my yearbook to look at their pictures. It's hard to describe, but when I saw that format, it all clicked into place for me- I knew the most effective thing would be for me to show the images of the faces of the dead, to let them speak for themselves, so to speak. It took several months to find all the various images on the internet, scan them, and format them so they were all approximately the same size. It was an emotional process reading so many obituaries, and imagining the effects of their deaths on their families. I printed the images on a laser printer on copy paper- it was also important to me that the medium disappear or intrude as little as possible on the content. I also liked the laser printout because it was very direct and reminded me of missing-person ads.

One of my philosophies about making art is to try to remain as observant as possible- often material will come up in the process of creating a piece that is much more interesting than any preconceived idea I might have had. That definitely occurred with this piece- I hadn't anticipated that the portraits would be transparent when I put them up in the windows. Although I think it works from the exterior, the interior views ended up being a more powerful experience for me. It feels more personal, since you can get close to the portraits, and you're also seeing them as they would have seen themselves in the mirror, which adds another layer of reflection to the work.”

INSTALLATION IMAGES

Documentary by WGN on The Facade Project, aired 11/07

Reporter-Steve Sanders, Producer-Pam Grimes, Photojournalist/Music-Mike D'Angelo.