Painting Chicago bridges

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Roland Kulla is one of those artists who takes the ordinary and turns it into something special.

Inside an old building that served shots and beers for more than 70 years on a side street in Back-of-the-Yards, you'll find Roland Kulla, a self-trained artist who sees beauty in bridges.

"I paint bridges. I really love the form," Kulla said. "So I've been painting them now for about 15 years."

The paintings, in a sense, are a reflection of his life, bridging the gaps between his ten years in a seminary and 35 years as a social worker, and, finally as a painter. But why bridges?

"I walked across, I think, the LaSalle Street bridge one day and I looked at the way the light kind of hit the bolt patterns and I said, 'What would happen if I just eliminated the background and focused on the patterns?'" he said.

Kulla said he loves rust because it adds a certain patina to the artwork. His paintings of bridges along the South Branch of the Chicago River will be shown in September at Zia Gallery in Winnetka. He begins with photographs and then builds bridges not to the future, but to the past.

"I do pretty well with bridges from about 1880 to about 1930. Because those were really built with a lot of steel," he said.

Kulla calls his work abstract realism.

"Because I kind of take a chunk of the bridge and take it out of its context and use the composition and then paint it as realistically as possible," Kulla said.

From on the scene to the studio, it takes about 30 days to complete each acrylic work.