But the organizer of the project, an artist who goes by Joey D., says, in the end, everyone really did their own thing.
The result: a hodgepodge of giant, oddball creatures that look like something straight out of Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch.”
Joey D., who’s 46 and lives in the Chicago area, says he pulled together the project in 2020 with help from an artist who goes by Peas.
“He has a lot of walls that he rotates,” Joey D. says. “I have two kids and a full-time job at the time. I had down time and messaged him, ‘Do you have any free walls?’ ”
Peas suggested this spot, and Joey D. says he “buffed the whole thing and found friends, a group of artists, to fill it out.”
The other artists involved go by Zwonzilla, KOZMO, Bird Milk, FEDZ, VERLOE, Low Rawr and Rodger Da Dodger.
Everyone did the project on their own dime, though the artists were thrown a few bucks later when the NBC’s “Chicago P.D.” did a shootout scene that had the mural in the background, Joey D. says.
Peas — real name Luis Molina, who lives in Chicago Ridge — says the wall also had briefly been seen another time on “Chicago P.D.” before the mural was there.
TV shows using murals as a backdrop is nothing new. A mural at 1831 S. Racine Ave. from the 1970s had a brief appearance in the first episode of another NBC cop drama, “Hill Street Blues,” in the early 1980s.
