For fatherhood mural in Wicker Park, Joe Miller used models he knows well: his brother and niece

It stands 50 feet high and spans a 50-feet-long stretch of a wall at 1821 W. North Ave. in Wicker Park and features a sleeping child being lovingly held by her father.

“People can look at it and see themselves as the child or the father,” says Miller, 39, who painted it last September. “Both ideas are important to feel — both comforted or empowered.”

The work was especially personal for the Canaryville artist, who grew up in Marquette Park.

To start, he based it on a photograph of members of his own family — his brother Sam and niece Leyla, who was 2 in the photo and is now 5.

The location was important, too. He’d done another mural there on the four-story space — of a giant blue cloud with color beams — for a planned music festival that ended up not happening. Its organizers had him stop work before he’d finished, and he wanted to come back but create something personal there this time.

Miller says he told the building’s owner, “I’d love to do something that’s from me, for me.”

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Miller says he created the work based on shapes rather than straight lines and used aggressive crosshatch marks on the portraits to make the images look more like a sketch.

“I feel like this big wall has become my personal, big sketchpad,” he says.

It’s a lot different from his usual style, which is heavy on images created from a series of dots, as in his “Uptown Dot King” mural at 1124 W. Wilson Ave. in Uptown.

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The location of “DADSTRENGTH” isn’t far from where Miller and his brother, who now lives in Los Angeles, once had an apartment together. He says the image makes him feel like his brother is still close by.

Sam Miller, who has two girls, says the mural speaks to how much his daughters mean to him.

“I just want to be the best dad I can for them,” he says.

He says he was surprised and thought it was a little weird when his brother asked for permission to put his face on a building but is looking forward to being back in Chicago so he and Leyla can see the mural.

“Chicago will always hold a special place in my heart,” he says.

Click on the map below for a selection of Chicago-area murals