Paint a dog and a flower or two Sunday at the Logan Square Dog Park

After months of preparation, the community has a chance to participate in painting dogs and flowers on the highway wall along the Logan Square Dog Park, 2529 W Logan Blvd, Sunday, June 12, from noon to 6 p.m. 

The gloomy brownish gray concrete wall and columns that face the new dog park is turning into a wonderful, inspiring space of color.  In the 14 bays created by large columns, colossal sized images of dogs (15 to 20 feet high), people and local landmarks are beginning to emerge. 

Soon they will have smaller sized (three to five feet high) dogs and even a cat below them! They will all be surrounded with flowers while the columns will sport different fun patterns. The wall's blue background goes from light to dark, representing time from day to night. 

Sunday participation
Everyone is invited to join the professionals and participate in this community project. Three ways to participate:

• Paint…wear painting clothes and help fill in parts of the wall. 
• Donate paint...Bring acrylic or water-based/latex house paint donations in bright reds, yellows, blues, greens, purples, oranges to the wall (also accepting blacks and browns).
• Volunteer...Help set up, distribute paint and brushes, clean up brushes, prepare paint and take down.  

What has happened to date
Scraping, priming, cleaning area, painting the background, projecting images on the wall, outlining the images and painting images have been achieved by the project organizers, AnySquared Projects led by Tracy Kostenbader, and ABC (Artistic Bombing Crew) and Renegades of Funk led by Flash (Barry Allen). 

Kostenbader and Flash orchestrated another community project in Logan Square last year.

They have gathered an impressive array of artists, many from the area, to create a variety of artistic styles. Each artist seems to have made their images personal. Kostenbader's pair of Great Danes is an homage to pets from her past, Gretchen Hasse is painting Hazel with her seeing-eye dog Zorro (from her comic) and Holiday Gerry is in tune with his husky which seems to encompass the spirit of a wolf. 

With monies raised over several years by the Logan Square Dog Park Committee, the artists are being given stipends and much of the paint has been purchased. 

Upcoming work

"We will not be finishing the project until later this summer," explained Kostenbader. 

At least two different youth groups will be lending a hand in July. They are Kuumba Lynx and La Casa Norte. 

Credits
The Logan Square Dog Park Committee persevered for years to make the Park and now the mural possible. Two of the key people are Sally Hamann and Roxann Ruiz. The canine's champion was of course Nacho, who fought a mighty battle for one so small. 

Special credit goes to former 35th Ward Alderman Rey Colon. "We really could not have done it without his support," said Hamann.