“Chester’s meticulous eye and precise hand lure viewers irresistibly to the tiniest of details, right down to the rivets in the steel bridges. Somehow the fact that the landscape is hand drawn makes it more compelling than any photograph could be. With delightful Easter eggs and perspectives no camera could capture in real life, Chicago Reflected is a magnificent time capsule of the Chicago River.”
— Geoffrey Baer, WTTW
“Inspired by the city itself and created during the coronavirus pandemic, Chicago Reflected is a uniquely personal journey-like city view that explores what exists, what has been lost, and what is under construction, all ingeniously juxtaposed along only recently reclaimed banks of the Chicago River. Accompanied by Thomas Dyja’s insightfully contextual essay, this remarkable work of art unleashes our curiosity, imagination, and personal recollections.”
— Vladimir Belogolovsky, curator, critic, and author of Architectural Guide Chicago
“Chester’s precise, inventive, remarkable drawing of the Chicago River is monumental in both scale and ambition. It slices through the city, through infrastructure, and through time itself to capture America’s greatest architectural ensemble in a way that viewers cannot have experienced. It is a delightful tour de force that will tickle experts and amateurs alike.”
— Reed Kroloff, Illinois Institute of Technology School of Architecture
“Chester’s passion for architecture and Chicago need not be explained with words—it can be seen in his art. I’m certain he was transported to us from the era of Piranesi and hope this generation will fully appreciate his gifts. We should collectively thank him for keeping the art form of hand drawing alive and well.”
— Juan Moreno, founder and president of JGMA
"An extraordinary continuous drawing of the skyline from the Chicago River, realistic in some ways but a fantasy in others. . . [A] one-of-a-kind work of art, an eleven-foot continuous foldout drawing that slides into a handsome cardboard sheath."
— Newcity
"Intricate and obsessive. . . . Dyja places Chester’s remarkably detailed gray-and-white sketching into a lineage of artists who unveiled the scope of the city, from Jules Guerin’s dream of a future Chicago for Daniel Burnham to Franklin McMahon’s sketches of Chicago courtrooms and street scenes for magazines and Chicago newspapers."
— Chicago Tribune