The mural on a three-story brick building at 815 W. Armitage Ave. evokes an elegant, almost timeless feeling.
Purple, red, yellow and pink flowers seem to burst forth from the wall, among them a sunflower spilling from a golden frame.
Within a light-blue backdrop, white lines subtly mark the borders of the city of Chicago and its neighborhoods.
At one side is an image of an old-time street lamp with two candles inside.
There’s a Victorian quality to much of the mural, perhaps appropriate since records show the building dates to the late 1800s.
Except for one thing: What is the deal with that pigeon atop the street light wearing a hardhat?
For starters, the real estate company that’s based there and that commissioned the artwork is involved with a lot of construction projects, says Amanda Stamelos of Coordinate Properties.
And the mural faces an alley, so a pigeon seemed kind of appropriate, Stamelos says.
Also, Danny Torres, the artist who created the mural, just likes pigeons. His Instagram has photos of his other artwork that includes a painting of a plump pigeon wearing a Bulls hat and a mural showing a pigeon in flight next to rapper Snoop Dogg.
“Most people look at them as vermin, but I think they’re beautiful, and there’s more than meets the eye,” says Torres, who was born in Ecuador and grew up in Portage Park and Humboldt Park. “I like pigeons because I can kind of relate. I’m an immigrant, and sometimes we’re looked down upon.”
Also, he says of pigeons: “They kind of represent, in my eyes, the common man. I also do like their resilience.”
Stamelos says the mural gives people passing by a chance to “look at something besides a brick wall” that they might find pleasing and take meaning from.
She says the candles inside the street lamp represent her and her husband, and the flowers were from a photo of blooms from a Lincoln Park farmers market. The flowers were already past their prime when the photo was taken.
Torres says the “significance is the passing of time and the changing of seasons.”
