Lake View Gallery Curates Art for 'Chicago Fire'

Chicago Fire may be filming in Bucktown, but when it comes to snagging props for their show, they’re on the hunt in Lake View.

The Leigh Gallery, located at 3306 N. Halsted St. in Boystown, serves up more than 80 artists' work to the production. Owner Jean Leigh, who opened the gallery eight years ago, says getting the unique gig was kind of a stroke of luck.

“The way it happened was one of my artists had been utilized by TV companies in the past when filming in Chicago,” Leigh said. “They went to him, but they needed much more. They used a couple other galleries in the city, but he told them to come here, and when they did, they went nuts.”

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Leigh says she’s been working with the entertainment industry to be Chicago’s curator to the television and film business for about five years now. Before loaning pieces to Chicago Fire’s crew, she did the same for movies like The Beast, starring Patrick Swayze.

Her next project will be providing art for the upcoming ABC show “Betrayal,” a new television show about a woman’s affair with a lawyer for a powerful family.

And while loaning art for filming doesn’t have glamorous perks, Leigh said it’s a pretty cool, unknown fact about her gallery.

“Tom Cruise does not walk in the door here,” Leigh laughed. “It’s just fun. It’s fun for the artist to say that they’re on a TV show, and it’s cool for me to say. … The pieces are gone for just a couple days, and it’s really painless. They pay me a fee, but the thing is, they end up buying a lot of the pieces.”

Anywhere from three to 15 pieces are gone from the gallery for filming at a given time, Leigh says, and about every artist feature in The Leigh Gallery has been used for the show.

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