Behavioral Health · Art Advisory · Mural · Commission

Insight Behavioral Health / Eating Recovery Center | 150 East Huron, Chicago

This project asked a specific and meaningful question: what does it feel like to be a young person in eating disorder treatment, and what can art do about that?

The 150 East Huron location was originally developed for Insight Behavioral Health and later integrated into Eating Recovery Center, serving a primarily younger population navigating one of the most difficult and vulnerable chapters of their lives. The art program was designed from the start with that specific person in mind. Not a clinical population in the abstract, but a young human being who deserves to feel that the space they are living in was made with care and intention.

The program is structured across three registers. Original artworks anchor the lobby, establishing warmth and visual identity from the moment of entry. Reproductions were selected and placed thoughtfully throughout the shared areas and corridors, chosen for their color, accessibility, and ability to create a sense of continuity across the space. And in the inpatient bedrooms, I designed and painted the murals.

The bedroom murals are an homage to Matisse's cut-outs, joyful, nature-oriented compositions in soothing color that fill the walls where patients sleep, rest, and do the hardest private work of their recovery. Matisse made his most luminous cut-outs while confined and unwell, finding in that constraint a new and radiant visual language. It felt like exactly the right reference for these rooms. The intention was simple: to make every young person who woke up in that space feel that someone had thought carefully about them, had put beauty on their walls on purpose, and believed they deserved it.

When working with a younger population, the curatorial approach shifts toward the whimsical, the creative, and the bright. Color carries more weight. Imagery needs to feel alive rather than restrained. The art has to meet young people where they are emotionally while still creating the calm and safety a healing environment requires. That balance is delicate and it informed every decision made here.

Developed in collaboration with Epic Interiors.