160' – My Latest Mural!

This month was consumed by painting a 160 foot long mural – my biggest mural yet!

The project is a "Welcome to the Hydraulics District" mural located at 550 Seneca Street in Buffalo, NY. I was awarded the project by applying to an open call through Arts Services Initiative. The project was originally scheduled for installation in 2020, but was postponed last summer due to Covid. My concept was to create a welcoming wall with patterns and lettering stemming directly from a publication historically published by the Larkin Soap Company, The Larkin Idea.

The Larkin Soap Company, was a company founded in 1875 in Buffalo, NY as a small soap factory. It grew tremendously throughout the late 1800s and into the first quarter of the 1900s with an approach called The Larkin Idea that transformed the company into a mail-order conglomerate that employed 2,000 people and had annual sales of $28.6 million (equivalent to $369,472,000 in 2020) in 1920. The company's success allowed them to hire Frank Lloyd Wright to design the iconic Larkin Administration Building which stood as a symbol of Larkin prosperity until the company's demise in the 1940s. (Adapted from Wikipedia)

This area of Buffalo has changed drastically since we moved here in 2014 and my mural adds a bright pop of color to the industrial neighborhood. Here are a few photo highlights of from my eight days of painting. I learned to drive a big boom lift, which felt pretty awesome and Silas gave me a tiny felt cat that he made as a good luck charm while I was working.

I wrapped this up last week and still need to get back to shoot some images of the finished piece, but it was fun to see people using the wall as a backdrop for fun photos as I was finishing up. It was two years ago that I painted my first mural, and since that time the leap from small works on paper made in my studio to painting big walls out in public has felt massive. Big murals are a ton of work, but bring me such a sense of joy and fulfillment. I am so grateful that I can do this work!