Downtown (movable location), SAN JOSÉ, CA • 8′ x 8′ x 20′
sponsored by Local Color SJ and Veggielution
This is the largest painting I’ve done yet! It’s a shipping container owned by Veggielution measuring in at a massive-to-me 8 feet x 8 feet x 20 feet.
Local Color got me in touch with Veggielution after they saw my Victory! mural square in the 100 Block mural. They keep this container downtown to store their food carts so it’s less of a haul for participating in events. A community garden on the east side of San José, Veggielution brings people together for every stage of the food process: prepping the land, planting the food, growing it, harvesting it, and preparing delicious foods with it. Neat organization!
I’ve been developing this stained glass look for larger pieces such as this ArtBox and a last hurrah mural at the original Local Color location. It’s a bit more illustrative and it’s fun to do the linework.
By sheer coincidence of timing I worked on this the same week as POW! WOW! San José 2019, a mural festival that brings in truly impressive mural artists that paint wall/building-sized murals during a one-week event. Both Local Color and Phantom Galleries coordinate murals year-round too and have really elevated SJ in the last 5 years or so.
It took five days total to paint this. Whew! It was especially tricky because three of the four sides are corrugated. Even with the smallest roller I could get, it wasn’t small enough to fit in the recessed areas. I ended up using it as normal on most of it and then tackling it sideways on the recessed parts. Also, the container couldn’t be moved and it was right up to a low wall. That meant I couldn’t paint the original design on one side, so I came up with an alternate that would show the logo. Last but not least, my color-mixing skills failed a little bit in trying to get the darker brown…but it was different enough from the base tan that I decided to keep it as is.
Since it’s a shipping container it’s movable and may end up elsewhere in downtown San José; it’s currently chilling in the parking lot between the closed Botown restaurant and The Ritz in the south First area.
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