Chicago artist celebrates famed 'rat hole' with mixed-media sculpture

Curious about Chicago’s now-famous “rat hole” on the North Side but don’t want to make a visit in person?

Now you can buy a handmade artistic replica of the creature’s near-perfect sidewalk indentation, set as the backdrop to an intentionally comical shrine replete with coins, faux cheese wheels, a small dumpster, a bottle of Malört and candles — including one featuring the image of a saintly rodent.

Created by McKinley Park artist Don Mega, who’s known locally for his graffiti art and murals, the sculpture is for sale for $600 at a designer toy store and art gallery in Lincoln Park.

Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere / Sun-Times

Mega, real name Don Gratzke, says he was inspired by the city’s obsession with the Roscoe Village rat hole — whether created by an actual rat as is lore, or more realistically, an unlucky squirrel landing in wet cement — and wanted to capture the fun of it.

“We have shootings every day,” he says of Chicago. But the rat hole, in an odd way, conveys hope.

Mega isn’t the first rat hole artist. Another Chicagoan has designed rat hole tattoos.

How people have reacted to the rat hole, Mega says — turning the site of the real rodent imprint in the 1900 block of West Roscoe Street into a place buzzing with visitors, where coins and other objects are left — shows “there’s still fun in this town.”

Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere / Sun-Times

“I wanted a few people to experience that,” Mega says.

Literally, a few. He made just three of the displays. Two have already been sold to private collectors, one remains on display and for sale (at least as of a few days ago) at Rotofugi Gallery, 2780 N. Lincoln Ave.

The creations are, in part, sculptures, though nontraditional. He made the replicas using “those big sheets of foam, like, pink insulation foam.”

“I printed a real picture” of the actual indentation that’s in the sidewalk, “made an outline, hand cut the stencil with an X-Acto blade,” Mega says. “I kind of just set it down into the foam, made my markings and used a Dremel tool to kind of just carve out the image of the rat.”

Provided

“I spent an entire day, 24 hours straight, to make the foam look exactly like the concrete,” he says. “A lot of prep went into it.”

The final product is so realistic, some people “were really convinced that that was out of the ground, that I actually took a piece of the concrete out.”

Overall, it’s intended as “a piece of art; it’s meant to kind of scoff at and roll your eyes at a little bit.”

Mega, who grew up mostly in Rolling Meadows, confesses he’s “never been up to see the rat hole.”

“But I’ve seen pictures, and it’s all everyone is talking about,” he said.

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