Rodney Duran definitely got his ducks in a row.
Earlier this month, Duran painted a bunch of colorful ducks on a closed storefront in Uptown that used to be a laundromat.
Why ducks? Well, he really likes them. Besides, with Lake Michigan nearby, that seemed fitting.
Beyond that, he says: “With all that’s going on in the world, I think people are trying to get their ducks in a row. If you notice, there’s one little chick at the end by itself, trying to keep up. It’s sort of metaphor to life right now.”
He says the mural also offers “a major statement on motherhood,” with the ducklings “trying to follow her, and she’s taking care of the babies.”
And the colors? “I chose different colors of the rainbow for different types of people, diversity, just open something that can really connect with everybody,” he says.
Also, if you look closely, Duran painted patterns inside the ducks that “kind of remind of me of music and wavelengths. It does come off as almost mechanical inside them.”
Duran says the ducks mural is similar to one featuring “sets of cats I did along a fence” that he painted last year in an alley in Albany Park near Montrose and Albany avenues.
“I did them as alley cats — nine cats, nine lives,” Duran says. “I did each color different. They got a huge response.”
Justin Weidl of the community organization Uptown United says the duck project came together because the owner of the building at 4700 N. Racine Ave. “had a hard time finding a commercial tenant and also keeping people out of the recessed, below-grade entry area. So he blocked it off with plywood.
“He’s going through an administrative zoning change to change the ground-floor use to residential and plans to reopen the entry eventually. Until then, he reached out to ask if we could help coordinate a mural, and we did.”
