Former MLB player Lofton captured in East Chicago mural
On Monday, baseball great Kenny Lofton, who has East Chicago roots, celebrated his 54th birthday.
East Chicago artist Marco Salazar, who has been spent the last six months of the pandemic creating a painted mural tribute to Lofton, had hoped his new wall-size outdoor masterpiece would be completed in time for Monday’s date. However, roller coaster weather of the past few months hampered the artist’s work timeline schedule.
So now, the mural will be a belated soon-to-be-unveiled birthday gift.
Lofton, who played for 11 different MLB teams during his 16-year career, was a six-time All-Star and four-time Gold Glove winner. Lofton made 11 postseason appearances, including World Series appearances in 1995 and 2002, first with the Cleveland Indians, and then with the San Francisco Giants. He played nineplus seasons with the Indians, helping the team win six division titles. In 2010, he was inducted into the Cleveland Indians Hall of Fame.
Lofton was raised by his widowed grandmother, Rosie Persons, in East Chicago and never knew his father, nor was he close to his mother, Annie, who had him while she was still in high school.
He was already playing both baseball and basketball once he started high school at Washington High School in East Chicago. He earned notice for his talent on the field as both pitcher and playing center field. But it was a basketball scholarship that was his student ticket to University of Arizona, where one of his Wildcats teammates was Steve Kerr. By his junior year, Lofton was playing for the Wildcats baseball team, which netted him a team position after college for the minor league Houston Astros.
Since retirement in 2010, Lofton has worked with coaching and also broadcasting.
Artist Salazar, 48, a graduate of East Chicago Central High School, said he wanted to honor Lofton because of the athlete’s dedication to both his family and his lifelong ties to Northwest Indiana.
Once Lofton was earning substantial money playing for Cleveland, he used some of his money to build a new house for the grandmother who raised him, while also helping other family members.
The design of the nearly finished mural, which is located at the Kenny Lofton Little League Field across from St. Catherine Hospital in East Chicago, features two images of Lofton in his Cleveland Indians uniform. Salazar had to secure the licensing rights from the MLB, which endorsed the creation of the mural and the use of the team logo. Once Salazar completes the jersey design, he will add Lofton’s MLB statistics and his team affiliations.
Before Salazar began his mural artist projects and created his own graphic design website at www. marcoart.net, he studied at the Art Institute, as well as the American Academy of Arts to pursue a degree in graphic design.
One of his first jobs was under the umbrella of Fasen Arts, the owner of the caricature and airbrush T-shirt and portrait national concessions franchise for Six Flags theme parks around the country. After just a year at Six Flags in Gurnee, Illinois, he accepted a position doing airbrush portraits and caricatures at Excalibur Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, before returning home to East Chicago to expand his art potential and projects.
Salazar also commissions celebrity-themed portraits, including his canvas captures of KISS band member Ace Frehley, singer Lenny Kravitz and Superman, among others. During the past decade, Salazar has lent his talents to create artwork and murals for St. Catherine Hospital, the Environmental Center in Hammond, El Salto restaurant in Chesterton, faith-based artwork for St. Mary Catholic Church in East Chicago, and spooky glowing menacing clown faces for the Reaper’s Realm Haunted House in Hammond.
“I love being able to connect to my art, as well as connect other through my art projects,” Salazar said.