The Pelican. A white pelican sits peacefully along the side of a Chicago west town building, where it seems to have its eyes set on the elevated subway and the many passersby. Its realistic head and feet, paired with its abstract body show two ways of perceiving the world wrapped into one.

Artist: Juan De La Mora is an architect and self-taught artist. The Chicago-born son of Mexican immigrants, he is deeply interested in bilingualism and how his two disciplines relate to one another, as well as with people and nature. De La Mora studied architecture in Chicago and Madrid, making his approach to the brick unique in using the brick facade as a grid system to highlight and extract an image from it. He calls this act of tracing and painting bricks and mortar lines, "brixels.” His work can be found around the globe in major cities Madrid, New York, San Francisco and Paris but also in Mexican towns of Oaxaca, Jalostotitlán and Santa Maria Ixcatlan to name a few.

Tom Harris is a Chicago based architectural photographer who grew up along the shores of the Great Lakes. In Chicago, he often works with with architects he considers “the best in the world,” including frequent collaborator Juan del la Mora.

The Pelican Puzzle