Northbrook nurse’s painted stones brighten local spaces
Fact checked by Shannon Sparks
Stone faces needn’t be stone-faced. Consider the stones that registered nurse and artist Katie Synek has hand painted. Her cheerful creations — featuring positive sayings and bright colors — have found their way to unexpected places in Chicago’s northern suburbs, including a food pantry and a once-neglected alley in Northbrook.
The stones appeared in the alley this past summer after several residents of Crestwood Place, a Northbrook senior apartment community, adopted the space. Many Crestwood residents, who use walkers and motorized chairs, travel through the alley to reach a nearby Walgreens.
Previously, they had to maneuver around discarded liquor bottles and other trash. Tall weeds obscured the alley’s only stop sign. People were illegally dumping furniture and oversized electronics, prompting a nearby business to install locks on its dumpsters.
When the Crestwood residents adopted the alley, they quickly began decorating — with a garden gnome, a welcome sign, and solar lighting. Then came Synek’s painted stones, which the residents had come across at a local food pantry. She was delighted and surprised to learn her artwork had found a home there.
“I love that the residents at Crestwood have chosen to add some rocks to the beautiful garden they have created in a previously overgrown and neglected area — another way to spread kindness and remind all of us of the good in people and our lives,” Synek says.
Crestwood Place seniors call their garden Blue Bird Way.
She says she’s received far more from the project than she ever expected and has lost track of how many she’s painted. “It feels like thousands.”
Synek began painting rocks during the pandemic. Her four-decade nursing career included roles in hospitals, home health agencies, retirement communities, and schools. From 2010 to 2023, she worked in hospital infectious disease and later in internal medicine before retiring at the end of August 2025.
At Glenbrook Hospital in Glenview, which Endeavor Health designated as its Covid-19 hospital during the pandemic, Synek says she saw “a lot of very scared and sad healthcare workers, and tensions were high. I just wanted to create something to help people smile and remind all of us to be kind.”
Synek’s husband, Rich, volunteers at the Northfield Township Food Pantry in Glenview and donates her painted stones there as well.
“In the past year or so, the Northfield Township Food Pantry has shared more than 300 of Katie’s beautiful, hand-painted rocks with clients, and they tend to disappear almost as soon as we set them out,” says Food Pantry Coordinator Julie Schaeffer. “Katie’s thoughtful creativity brings a little extra hope and joy to everyone who walks through our doors.” And now, also down a nearby alleyway.
