As elusive as the masked women she creates, The Peace Prophet is arguably the best Arte Agora artist currently working in Chicago. Following in the footsteps of Lee Godie, another female artist who for approximately 30 years made and sold her drawings from the stairs of the Art Institute of Chicago and surrounding environs, The Peace Prophet, whose given name is Janice Carol Rivers, creates art and sells it outdoors, sometimes in Millennium Park or on Wabash Avenue, around the corner from the Cultural Center.
That is, if you can find her, and if she is willing to sell you her art.
My husband, Daniel X. O’Neil, has been an avid collector of outsider art (Wesley Willis, Mr. Imagination, Howard Finster) for well over half his life. He has also made it his habit to always purchase art from anyone who is selling it outside. “Basically: if you’re selling art in the street, I’m going to buy it,” he was quoted as saying in The Chicago Reader. That is how nearly 50 works by The Peace Prophet have come to be in our collection.
Dan is also an excellent archivist. He typically notes on the backs of the art that he purchases where and when they were acquired. The first pieces from The Peace Prophet that we have were purchased by Dan in 2010. Small in size (4.5” x 5.5”) they are primarily in reds, oranges and yellows and are watercolors or watercolor and marker floral images.
The first larger format piece of The Peace Prophet’s that we have (28” x 22”), Dan bought on and gave to me for our fifth wedding anniversary, on 2/17/2016. It is my favorite of her works that we have—and not only for sentimental reasons.
Featuring those same reds, oranges and yellows of the small floral paintings from 6 years earlier, this watercolor work features a masked woman whose dress/shirt is a collage of McDonald’s cheeseburger wrappers and whose hair is formed of a collage of Walgreen’s receipts, on top of which the artist has painted. The woman even has a tiny blue teardrop nose ring “jewel” that has been glued on. The crosshatching/plaid patterning of her shirt appears in some of The Peace Prophet’s other works, namely in her paintings and collages of flowers in a vase.
This incredibly inventive and brilliant work exemplifies the best in The Peace Prophet’s work. She is working with the materials she has on hand to create a portrait of a masked woman, a frequently-repeated image in her. The questions is, who is that elusive masked woman?