Naperville portraits show 'authenticity' in 'happy accident of art'

"Show me you," Shannon Greene Robb said to 28 people, her iPhone inches from their faces.

"That's kind of the only direction I gave them," she says about an art project she calls "Authenticity."

The piece, now gracing a downtown Naperville alley east of Main Street between Jackson and Jefferson avenues, shows the expressions those 28 subjects made when she asked to see their true selves. There are silly faces, smiles and deadpan stares.

"It was an interesting experience for me as an artist to feel how they showed up," Greene Robb said about the people she captured, a mix of friends and strangers.

The photos on the alley wall near the Liam Brex kitchen remodeling store are shown in tones of black and white, with a diversity of ages and ethnicities represented.

"You almost can't see the difference," Greene Robb said. "It's that happy accident of art."

Greene Robb's piece is a local installation of the Inside Out Project, which displays large-scale portraits of people taken all over the world.

An international artist who goes by JR created the project after he gave a talk at the 2011 TED conference and won the TED Prize from the nonprofit organization that works to spread ideas through short, engaging talks.

Now, Project Inside Out pieces are visible in 129 countries, showing the portraits of 260,000 people.

Greene Robb said she applied in the spring to create a Naperville version of the project, which she heard about from Arthur Zards, founder of the TEDx Naperville conference that's hosting several speakers on Friday.

After meeting JR in 2011 at the TED conference, Zards said he knew Project Inside Out had a place in Naperville. It was all about finding the right artist.

Greene Robb, 45, who runs an art education organization called Arranmore Arts, was the right person because of the passion she immediately showed, Zards said.

Greene Robb said she wanted to highlight the authenticity of Naperville residents with spontaneous reactions from unsuspecting faces.

"It's just people being people," Zards said. "You don't see much of that these days."

The images will stay up until the weather disintegrates them, the artist said. Roughly 25 more portraits Greene Robb took as part of "Authenticity" will be on display Friday during the TEDx Naperville conference, which runs 1 to 7:15 p.m. at the Yellow Box Community Christian Church, 1635 Emerson Lane.