Chicago artist David Lee Csicsko sees things that the rest of us do not. Sometimes those things are revealed because of his highly trained eye – the way that patterns can be found in the curls of girls' hair, say, or how the leaves of trees form balances and symmetries. Sometimes they are things that the rest of us might strain to discover to no avail: A mischievous bird standing behind someone's shoulder. A ring of fire. A heart beating on the outside of a body. Yet so clear is his vision and so invisible his remarkable technique that it is not long before we see these things too and wonder why we never saw them before. In matters of making art, he is Sherlock Holmes and we are all Dr. Watson, marveling at how elementary he shows things to be.

So it is especially appropriate that the career retrospective for this Hammond native now up at South Shore Arts in Munster, Indiana, through April 22 is entitled "The Visual Detective: Art and Design of David Lee Csicsko." You'll recognize his pieces yourself – from the Belmont "El" station, Lyric Opera and Grant Park posters, Loyola University, area churches, and many othe places.

I first saw David's work some 25 years ago – on logos, nameplates, in newspapers. It was so fresh and alive and inviting and it has remained so, in part because David is always open to new techniques and media. But more importantly, I think, his work still astonishes and delights because David's eyes are always open. Like Holmes, he can't help but make discoveries. As they say these days, it is in his DNA. There was a time when David's work was defined for many people by his technique: He was the X-Acto knife kid. But such definitions were misunderstandings. David has always seen things with remarkable clarity and he has looked for tools that help him achieve in his work what he sees with his eye. So for a period it was the perfect contrast and cleanness that the X-Acto's cuts made possible. Then, when he'd mastered the Macintosh, it was the possibility of computer graphics – again, though, as a translator for what he already saw, not as a substitute for seeing. And lest an observer think that this is an artist looking only at the au courant or in love with technology, there have been the remarkable recent flowerings of David's work first in the centuries-old medium of stained glass and then and now in the even more ancient system of mosaics. Tools for David are just that – tools – instruments, means to the end of sharing his discoveries with the viewer.

A proud son of the Midwest, of Indiana, of the South Shore of Lake Michigan, of laboring people, David is the most democratic of artists. It should come as no surprise that he was influenced as a boy by the art of an area church that showed, with reverence and celebration, the art of labor. From his family came an enviable work ethic and a refusal to judge people by surfaces or to accept prejudices instead of being guided by basic decency. This openness, this naturalness, has meant that people often viewed by others as outsiders – children, Black people, gay people, people of faith – have come to David to tell their stories. And he tells them both honestly and beautifully in his work.

While David was assembling his work for the honor of this retrospective, he and his friends could not help but notice certain images or subjects that recurred over the years, unintentionally as far as anyone can tell. Hearts, birds (usually smiling), but above all, eyes. Big eyes, clear eyes, focused eyes, dreamy eyes, open eyes. "What was I thinking about with all of these eyes?" David would ask. That the answer is clear does not make it any less important or moving. Through his art, and his life, for some 50 years now, David has been saying, "Look what I see." And we've seen it, every time, marveled at it, and taken it to heart. What David Lee Csicsko is really saying, of course, is "Look what I see. Come with me – You can see it too."