Mural promoting pet adoption almost complete in Naperville

The owner of Dog Patch Pet and Feed in Naperville had just been thinking about art when a muralist walked in to make a few pet purchases.

Janson Rapisarda was getting a flat tire repaired across the street at Discount Tire, pet store owner Greg Gordon said, when he came to Dog Patch to pick up a few things. The artist did a double-take after he left and came back asking, "Did you guys ever think about putting a mural on that wall?"

Turns out, Gordon had - but only recently.

In May, Gordon said, the driver of a plumbing truck crashed into the wall of the building at 1108 E. Ogden Ave., creating a hole about 4 feet wide and 4 feet high.

"We patched it up and put it back together, and that wall had a fresh coat (of paint) on it," Gordon said. "And we talked about how cool it would be to put a mural on it."

Not long after the thought occurred to Gordon, Rapisarda walked through the store's doors.

Through his Philadelphia-based painting company, Cera Street Art, Rapisarda has created large murals or other works of art in Chicago, Baltimore, Milwaukee, New York, Philadelphia and Seoul, South Korea.

For Dog Patch, he is putting the finishing touches on a 50-foot-wide painting of a cat and a dog chasing a blue ball in front of a flag that says "ADOPT."

"We wanted to have a visual representation of what we believe in in terms of adoption," Gordon said. "I'm a big believer in adoption."

The store, for about the past nine years, has sold only rescue animals, adopting them out by charging a fee between $150 and $450 to cover veterinary services. It's a business model in which the adoptable dogs and cats are the "bait" to get customers to "buy stuff," Gordon said, and it's been working, with an average of one dog adopted each day.

"We have rescue dogs here all the time," he said - typically between 15 and 20 - and almost always some cats or kittens, too. "Our thing is just to get them out of a bad place and into a good one."

Inside the store, Gordon said, customers can notice art all around. So adding art to the store's exterior seemed a great way to brighten it up and enliven Naperville's East Ogden corridor, which is home to many vacant storefronts in two large strip malls not far east of Dog Patch.

The mural, once completed, could become a part of Century Walk Corp., a nonprofit public art group established in 1996 to put artworks throughout Naperville.

Brand Bobosky, Century Walk chairman, said he is working with Gordon to potentially include the Dog Patch mural as Century Walk's 51st art location.

"We don't have anything in that Ogden corridor or the northeast part of the town," Bobosky said, as many Century Walk sites are concentrated in the downtown. "From our standpoint, this is a great deal."

Gordon has been raising money to cover the mural's roughly $3,000 cost through a GoFundMe page and by seeking private donations. He said the fundraiser has exceeded its goal, and he will put extra proceeds toward caring for the animals the store fosters as a licensed shelter.