Art and train enthusiasts will have a chance to learn more about the popular South Shore Line posters this weekend. Knox resident Mitch Markovitz is the artist behind the “Just Around the Corner” poster series. To celebrate its 20th anniversary, he’ll host a gallery talk Saturday morning at 10:30 at the Indiana Welcome Center in Hammond. “I’ll explain how we construct a poster basically, not exactly how to do one but the basic steps in putting one together,” he says, “and the various sponsors and the areas we’ve portrayed.”
Markovitz says the idea to relaunch the South Shore poster campaign first came to him back in the 1970s, when he was working in Wisconsin. “I had always known about the South Shore Line posters from the ’20s and always felt they had a timeless quality about them, that if you were to use them in advertising now, they’d be just as relevant as they were in the ’20s, and I was homesick for Indiana at the time,” he explains. “So I made two large oil paintings, copying two already-existing posters that were done in the ’20s.”
Eventually, Markovitz moved back to Indiana and became the South Shore Line’s art and advertising director. He created a poster commemorating the retirement of the old orange South Shore cars in 1984, as well as three paintings for different events in Miller Beach.
But he says a full relaunch of the South Shore Line posters didn’t take off until 1996, when two IU Northwest professors wanted to put together a book about the old posters. “At the same time, John Davies, who was the vice-president of marketing for the Northwest Indiana Forum, was looking for a new way to promote Northwest Indiana to Chicago, the country, and the rest of the world, as an opportunity for development,” Markovitz says. “So they got the idea that perhaps they should start a new series of South Shore Line posters, and they contacted me.”
Markovitz says the new series officially kicked off on June 10, 1997, and its first poster, sponsored by NIPSCO, was unveiled that October. In total, 100 posters have been created as part of the “Just Around the Corner” series. The most recent, called “Cheers to Region Beer” was sponsored by 22 of Northwest Indiana’s craft breweries. Beyond those, Markovitz says his personal favorites include his Miller Beach and Family Express posters.
Saturday’s gallery talk will take place at the Indiana Welcome Center at 7770 Corinne Drive in Hammond, near I-80/94 and Kennedy Avenue.
