silhouette & chaos
TRIED AND TRUE PROCESS FOR BROAD COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
COMMUNAL CREATIVE CHAOS
FRAMED WITH CAREFULLY DESIGNED CONTEXT
When Quirk Hotel started work on a second location, I was absolutely delighted to work with André Shank to create something special for their rooftop bar and restaurant. Since we’d both worked with Quirk before on a few different projects, this was a comfortable opportunity to go out on a limb! They entrusted us with a free-reign approach, and the two of us approached the wall with only an idea for the process but no design.
André and I were able to bounce off of each other’s colors and shapes to discover this footloose and fancy-free mural that surprised both of us! Huge thanks to André for being an extraordinary vibesmith and to Adam Dorland and Katie Ukrop for encouraging our experimentation.
This piece is a love letter and an invitation to love. A pair of roses silhouette a painted collage - the pictures I filled this space with are all slices of Richmond. Glimpses of skyline, reflections on the river, phone lines against the sky all blur together to create a warm textured portrait of the city.
As shown below, the first layer of this process is the energetic broad strokes of this portrait, creating an abstract frenzy of color. The second layer is the delicate transparent white that carves away at the frenzy to sculpt the shapes of the two roses. For me this is a joyful and honest display of the creative process - “write drunk, edit sober” as they say. It also alludes to the romaticization of everyday life - every day is over-filled with criss-crossing intentions and plot-lines, but with a gentle and visionary hand, you can compose the story of your experience that you want to tell.
From Quirk Hotel’s website: Each room not only spotlights Richmond's established artists, but supports its next generation of talent with a percentage of each booking benefiting VisArt's Make Space, a program pairing sixth-grade girls with female artists for a year of mentorship and art-making.
100 fifth graders + 6 colors + 5 days....!
I spent a week encouraging dozens of fifth graders (who needed no encouragement) to paint whatever they want on a wall. Then I spent another week massaging the whole explosion into a cohesive design. I've done this process many times now, allowing a large group of people to paint anything anything anything they want in layered chaos, then circling back and creating a unified composition out of it. This is the most colorful I've ever dared go with it, and I'm delighted with the results.
I always try to leave as much of the intentional marks as possible - framing and sculpting rather than covering. My hope for a wall like this is that anyone who touched it feels that they contributed meaningfully to a huge beautiful work of art, and that anyone who comes after enjoys discovering new details forever.
This wall was a capstone project for the graduating fifth grade class, and I hope it inspires many classes to come. Thanks to the 5th grade class of Robious Elementary for doing all the interesting parts and rolling with the punches when your parts got painted over (and over and over and over). Thanks to all the students, the school, and to Mr. Woodward!