To see artwork by Chicago artist Ariel Sinha, look no further than this WNBA ball

Chicago artist Ariel Sinha has a WNBA basketball in her hands.

The vinyl decal images on the ball, images that she created, depict women playing hoops in front of red flowers, the Navy Pier Ferris wheel and the Chicago skyline. The letters S-O-I-T-G-O-E-S are tattooed on Sinha’s fingers. The phrase is a nod to Kurt Vonnegut’s philosophy on destiny in his anti-war novel “Slaughterhouse-Five.”

Sinha is holding court in a Lincoln Square coffee shop. She looks at the basketball with a smile and says, “It’s a completely playable ball.” The work is called “Chicago Love” and was commissioned by the WNBA and Wilson Sporting Goods and debuted in July at the WNBA All-Star game at Wintrust Arena in Chicago, was seen during the Sky’s successful run to the WNBA playoffs and will soon be available online through Wilson.

Sinha passes love and hope along to her subjects. During the early days of the Black Lives Matter movement, Sinha’s images of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor garnered attention for their spirit of dignity. Taylor is in front of blooming flowers. Floyd stands tall in front of an organic filigree pattern.

The colorful, sanguine nature of Sinha’s self-taught art complements her role in Holy Goat, an improvisational team that hosts “The Friday Show” on Friday nights at the nonprofit Logan Square Improv Theater. Sinha’s snapdragon wit and welcoming persona make her a force in the six-women, one-man team.

“The art came before the improv,” says Sinha, 32. “As a kid, I was in the arts, but I didn’t know how I could make a career out of it. So I studied public relations and women’s studies at Kansas State University. But I always maintained art as a hobby. My first job was at an agency in the creative world and I started doing more art.

“I’ve been doing improv for a decade. I started in stand-up. I liked stand-up, but I never felt more manic in my life. Such highs and such lows. But then I met other improvisers through stand-up. What I liked about improv is that it is a team sport. When you succeed together, you celebrate together. When you bomb together, you commiserate.”

Just like basketball.

Art can also be improvisational. Does Sinha’s one pursuit of happiness inform the other path?

“I’ve never dissected it like that,” she answers. “I always want to design with a sense of humor, especially when a project calls for it. I like little moments of surprise in art, which is parallel to improv. The other thing for me is representation. I like to use organic bold shapes and vivid colors to represent people from all walks of life. My art is not going to be for everyone but it is important to me for anyone to be able to see themselves reflected in the works that I do. And, in improv, I want anyone to come to a show and feel included and relate to what’s happening on stage.”

Sinha grew up in Lenexa, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri. Her father David Sinha is a retired schoolteacher, present-day songwriter and children’s book author. Her mother Vonda Morris is also a schoolteacher and quilter who took a sabbatical to open a quilt store in Kansas City. Her older brother Devin lives in Seattle where he is a singer-songwriter and a developer at Microsoft.

Sinha lived in Omaha, Nebraska, between 2012 and 2017. She started studying comedy in Omaha and also sang and played percussion in the Nebraska funk band A Ferocious Jungle Cat. Sinha moved to Chicago in 2017.

“Being on a bigger playing field in Chicago gave me a lot of opportunities,” she says. “Chicago is very inspiring with the street art and all the galleries.” In 2021 Sinha produced four game-day posters for the Chicago Bears. From that job, she designed a cap for the Chicago Bulls Artist Hat Series. “And I started getting a lot of jobs because I was doing a lot of art activism,” she says. “Having a scene like Chicago where activism is a core part of the culture and part of my daily life it felt natural to integrate art with things that I was interested in.”

Sinha found an advocate for her work at All Star Press in Logan Square. All Star owner-curator Zissou Tasseff-Elenkoff brokered Sinha’s deals with the Bears and the Bulls. He also played soccer with Sinha’s husband, Ziggy Williamson, a Chicago collage artist who works from a field of vintage magazines.

“I’ve been curating for 15 years and we’re always looking for new artists with different aesthetics and backgrounds,” Tasseff-Elenkoff says. “Ariel is pretty design heavy, but we have people who do graffiti and street art. … I wanted to work with Ariel for a while. When you meet her, she’s all smiles and bubbly. She’s nice to be around and that translates into her work.”

Wilson reached out to Sinha to design the ball for the All-Star game, she said, because they wanted to collaborate with a Chicago artist. She thinks her previous work with the Bears and Bulls may have helped get her name out there. For the image itself, Wilson’s in-house creatives gave her a lot freedom, she said, “but they did provide the themes they were after: Chicago love, women’s empowerment, inclusivity.”

Sinha works from digital illustrations drawn on an iPad. She uses photo references that she shapes into her style. Her Breonna Taylor “Say Her Name” portrait went viral. It touched thousands of people, including Taylor’s family. Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman was shot and killed in March 2020 by Louisville, Kentucky, police in a forced entry raid at her apartment. On Aug. 4, four officers were charged with federal crimes by the U.S. Department of Justice.

“For Breonna Taylor, there was no real reason than I was looking for an outlet for my sadness, frustration and anger,” Sinha says. “What could I contribute? What skills do I have? I posted it online with messaging on what I was thinking. I was surprised how that resonated with people. You can try to start a conversation and hopefully, that leads to change.”

Some people in Taylor’s community saw the art. They contacted Sinha to see if they could use her portrait to promote the GoFundMe campaign to raise money for the Breonna Taylor Foundation to support the family with legal fees, travel expenses and any other expenses. “I worked directly with her friends and family to associate that piece with what they were doing,” she explains. “That’s how that piece became central in her message. I did have some complicated feelings because doing that led to other job opportunities for me, which is positive. But I would never want to use the work I was doing in an activism capacity to make money. That’s purely for the cause.”

Along with being an independent artist, Sinha is a full-time associate design director at Shift7 Digital, a Chicago marketing agency. Sinha is currently working on digital restaurant guides for Chicago Airbnbs. She is also collaborating with a composer who is writing pieces inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and the 1930 Salt March in India. Her artwork will be on covers of compositions played by Chicago wind ensemble productions.

Like the essence of basketball, Sinha’s work celebrates the possibility of community. No matter the medium, she takes her audience to a higher ground.

Dave Hoekstra is a freelance writer.