CHICAGO (WLS) — Longtime courtroom sketch artist Andy Austin has died.
She had a front row seat to many of the most important stories in Chicago history, and much of her work was seen on ABC7 Chicago.
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That history is portrayed in a collection of more than 3,000 sketches by Austin.
With no cameras allowed in courtrooms until recent years, sketches were the only way to visualize what happened in court.
“She started as an amateur, taking up sketching and drawing as a hobby, but she truly refined her skills and mastered the art,” explained Brittany Adams, a librarian specializing in special collections.
She sketched everyone: from mobsters, to governors, to celebrities like Michael Jackson, to mass murderers like John Wayne Gacy.
Adams is the special collections librarian at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law that houses the collection of more than 40 years of trials.
She said Austin’s work is probably the most requested collection they have.
“She was a great artist, but she was also a great journalist,” said Mary Wisniewski, judicial communications director.
Accompanying most of her sketches were important notes drawn from the testimonies she listened to, including comments from former Gov. Rod Blagojevich regarding secretly recorded conversations where he remarked, “sounds like me.”
Austin had to draw under intense pressure in order to get the sketches done in time to make the news deadlines.
It was a skill she passed on to current ABC7 courtroom artist L.D. Chukman.
“Almost all her drawings were adorned with notes about who she was drawing and what their significance to the story was,” Chukman said.
Austin was also a mother, coming home to two young children after work, sharing stories about her day.
“Her stories were a big deal to us, but we kind of scared of them sometimes,” daughter Sasha Austin said.
Austin was active and busy through the end of her life.
Aside from the collection at Northwestern, she was working on an exhibit to be shown at her local library, where she lived in Maine.
Austin was 89 years old.
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