Borrelli: Artist fills potholes, turns them into mosaics

It's officially spring. We're deep into pothole season, which, like other holiday seasons, seems to grow longer every year. This pothole season could be the longest yet. Potholes are out of control. The Chicago Department of Transportation said last month that pothole complaints have tripled in the past year; and since New Year's Day alone, the city has filled more than 350,000 potholes. And because, according to CDOT, which assumes there are at least five unreported potholes for each reported pothole, their conservative estimate of the number of potholes remaining is, well, about 60,000 potholes.

At the very, very least.

Now, take into account that Chicago has merely 30 pothole crews, only a few of the which work weekends, and the pothole epidemic stemming from the apocalyptic winter of 2013-2014 should be resolved ... um, uh ...

But wait: In Chicago, one man can make a difference. And that man is Jim Bachor, professional artist, stay-at-home dad and former corporate branding executive. He has an elegant solution. Not an efficient solution.

But it looks terrific, and is pretty near genius. (Are you listening, MacArthur Foundation?)

About a year ago, Bachor began filling potholes with a clever 16-by-24-inch mosaic, modeled on the design of the official Chicago flag but with the word "Pothole" through the center.

Think functional graffiti. Or cheeky public art.

The mosaic slides into a pothole, Bachor cements it in place. Boom, done: A "Pothole" where a pothole sat.

So far, he's filled only four potholes, in the Mayfair and Jefferson Park neighborhoods, not far from his home on the Northwest Side. He said he has loose plans to do several more in the next several months. But not every pothole in the city. Partly that's because he does this on this own, with his own money; each mosaic costs about $50 in marble and materials. But also, Bachor, who reinvented himself as an artist in 2012 after being laid off from his job as creative director at a Chicago advertising firm, sells ironic, pop-culture mosaics of cereal boxes and junk food for $2,000 a piece; and this summer, his sprawling, elaborate mosaic for the CTA's Thorndale station will be installed, his first public art commission. "So, the potholes are literally filler."

And yet, if the city of Chicago needed a tasteful way of addressing its pothole problem, if it needed an official Chicago pothole patch, it could do worse than Jim Bachor's slightly satirical, civic-minded "Pothole."

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Borrelli: Artist fills potholes, turns them into mosaics