Home of FlyBoy: Walk Through Nevermore Park
Nevermore Park is home. Where Lil Mamas and Fly Boys were born...it’s their origin story and where we find inspiration.
It seems only right that Hebru Brantley takes how we experience our favorite hero to the next level. An immersive, physically engaging, and personally nostalgic level.
Welcome to Nevermore Park.
As music thumps thru the walls of check in, there are a few rules: Put back whatever you pick up, mention @flyboyuniverse, don’t eat anything that may be edible, and of course enjoy.
As you enter Nevermore, there is Brantley’s familiar colorful work. Pieces are thoughtfully hung on traditionally stark white walls. This is the typical art experience we’re used to. All that changes when you turn the corner into a blown out wall of Flyboys. I found myself surrounded by music, walking excited and dumbfounded through a hall of old newspapers highlighting Black history…Chicago history, I’ve entered Nevemore Park.
What lies ahead of you is a space that is truly unique, but somehow familiar. Inside of Brantley’s mind and the lives of our favorite heroes, Fly Boy and Lil Mama. There’s a news stand filled with pieces of history; of Ebony and Jet covers, headlines of Obama’s historical journey to President, and Michael Jordan’s three peat. Pullman and Black Film ads. There’s a shop of TVs playing Sanford and Son, a Tuskegee Airman jacket draped over a drafting stool up against a desk of magazines, flyboy sketches, gears, tools, and goggles. Each piece giving you a little more of Fly Boy’s origin.
In Nevermore you’re taken through a child’s space full of the toys of our past, a place where we’ve all escaped to let our imaginations run wild…as Kanye’s ‘We Don’t Care’ plays. A crashed rocketship that we’ve seen our hero ride many times, a life size terrarium of stain glass and ferns…and so much more inbetween that I’ll leave for you to experience.
Lil Mama is featured in the middle of the floor. As you open the door, her mind is filled with Aaliyah’s ‘One in a Million’. Why wouldn’t we make our own IG music video to our beloved Baby Girl? The L sits at the end of Nevermore with a surprise that will take you to a different time. There’s so much to see and experience beyond what I’ve written and the pictures that you’ll see. Nevermore is a place to explore, feel, listen to, and be inspired by.
Nevermore Park has been extended through December 29th in Chicago.
GO!
