New Murals in St. Charles encourage support for local animal rescues

The new set of murals on the back of the Fox.Build Makerspace building at 11 E. Main St. in St. Charles feature the artist’s rescue pets along with QR codes that prompt viewers to donate to local animal shelters and pet rescue organizations.

The Artist

St. Charles native Chris Cudworth has been a wildlife painter since he was 11 years old. Even before majoring in fine art at Luther College in Iowa, Cudworth was a successful local artist with work hanging in local restaurants, exhibits in local art shows such as Geneva’s Swedish Days and long-standing murals such as the bulldog in front of the Batavia Government Center.

Cudworth sold his first painting at age 17 while he was attending St. Charles High School. It hung in the Manor Pancake House for almost 40 years. He has since sold about 3,000 paintings and painted many murals and public art installations.

Cudworth has a long history of painting animals and has painted murals for pet-related businesses before including the walls inside the kennels of Ruffner’s Luxury Pet Boarding, a dog day care center in St. Charles.

“I like doing this work because it’s fun,” Cudworth said. “Getting people interested in either donating to a pet rescue or finding out if they would want to adopt a pet themselves seems like a pretty good cause for a mural.”

Cudworth is a published author, journalist, philanthropist, illustrator and poet. He has authored several books, thousands of articles for newspapers and magazines and collections of short stories and poems.

The Murals

The murals are about 15 feet tall and 4 1/2 feet wide and depict cats and dogs lounging on staircases. They were painted by hand in acrylic paint and sealed with a UV protective coating that shields them from sun damage and graffiti.

Cudworth began working on the murals in May. He finished in two days, spending about six hours on each mural. One mural depicts Cudworth’s dogs Lucy and Crash. The other features his stepdaughter’s cats, Mercury, Apollo and Benny, all of which are rescues.

Each mural is inscribed with a quote. The mural depicting cats features a quote from Albert Schweitzer: “There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.” The other features a quote from Mary Oliver: “Because of a dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift.”

The murals were commissioned by Doug Kimber, owner of Fox.Build Makerspace, a collaborative workspace in downtown St. Charles that provides entrepreneurs and small businesses with office space or a place to work and do business.

Kimber said he commissioned the murals because the plywood-covered windows on the back of the building were not very attractive. He said the murals are not the kind one might expect, but they help beautify the building and have sparked a lot of interest.

“I’ve heard a bunch of good comments on it. People think it’s unique and interesting,” Kimber said. “It draws some attention. They’re definitely way more fun than a blank plywood window was.”

Kimber and Cudworth met through one of the members of Fox.Build Makerspace and when the latter had the idea to use the murals to support local shelters, Kimber gave his full support of the cause.

The building also houses local deli Smitty’s on the Corner and connects to Dukes Northwoods and The Graceful Ordinary. Cudworth said the business owners in the building are happy to have the murals, which give the back of the building a greater presence and have been a hot topic among customers since their completion.

“People come in talking about them and they all believe in pet rescue, so it’s a pretty cool little project to have there,” Cudworth said. “It enhances the back of the building with an eye-catching three-dimensional look.”

The Cause

Cudworth said the inspiration for the murals came before the idea to support animal rescues. That idea came to him about halfway through the painting process.

Cudworth said thinking about his dogs and his stepdaughter’s cats that were the subjects for the murals, he realized they all came from pet rescue organizations and reached out to local shelters and asked if they would be interested in being the recipients of some attention from the murals.

“It kind of occurred to me along the way during the making of it,” Cudworth said. “I thought, ‘How can I do something good with these?’ That was kind of my motivation. Being a rescue pet family, I thought this could really do some good for some organizations that struggle for funding and are looking to find homes for some of these pets because they do a lot of good.”

His dogs Lucy and Crash both came from Safe Haven. Lucy was rescued and rehabilitated after she was thrown out of a car window and abandoned in Tennessee. Crash was adopted as a puppy but was not cared for by his original owners, who eventually turned him over to a kill shelter before Safe Haven took him in.

Cudworth said whenever he tells people his dogs’ stories, it incites an emotional and empathetic reaction.

“I’m sort of sentimental in that way, but I’m also pragmatic and I know that it all comes down to awareness,” he said. “That’s why I thought this location could be a really interesting place to do a public awareness campaign for some of these pet rescue organizations.”

The QR code on each of the murals directs viewers to Cudworth’s webpage, christophercudworth.com/rescue-pets-5, which displays links to Anderson Humane, Tiny N Tall Rescue, Inc. and Safe Haven Dog Rescue. The webpage also has a gallery of his wildlife paintings for sale. Ten percent of the proceeds from those sales will be donated to the pet care organizations.

Cudworth said he intends to continue the awareness campaign with future murals so that it snowballs into something bigger and can really help raise funding for these organizations.

“It’s pretty miraculous what these people do,” he said. “Donations to organizations like these can really save lives.”

To learn more about the murals, make a donation or view more of Cudworth’s art, visit www.christophercudworth.com or contact him at chris@christophercudworth.com.