SJ Artbox: my utility box mural

So happy to be a participating artist for one of San Jose's painted utility boxes and I am thrilled too that I got to paint one in my neighborhood ;)

4 days and 3 with insane May heat! = I met a lot of locals and sweet people who would stop by to find out what I was doing or others would honk and wave and yell good job. I really appreciated that!

In 2008 I created a street mural with chalk as a featured artist in San Rafael of the 'Goddess of Mt. Tamalpais.' To be considered for the Artbox program I had to submit past artwork, so I included the 'Goddess' piece in addition to a few other paintings.

They asked me if I could paint the 'Goddess' but make it about San Jose instead of Marin and San Francisco.

I decided to celebrate the landmarks of San Jose, Willow Glen, our mountain range (with Lick Observatory) and have her as the 'Goddess of Mt. Hamilton.'

In her hands she holds the moon, a vessel, and pours stars over San Jose and our 'Valley of Hearts Delight' as Willow Glen is known.

This was such a great experience. I'd love to do more public murals :)

Day 2: Color Blocking

Another HOT day! Fighting the paint as it wanted to dry and skin up from the heat, but I won :) Great progress with some large shape color-blocking. Feels good to see it begin to take shape.

Graffiti gone, Painting Restored

I've already dumped my frustrations on Tagging in a previous post. It's clear, I'm sure. I hate it!

It was quite an experience working on the restoration of the painting underneath the Tagging. Finding, choosing, matching, buying the house paint to match, that was fun!

Paint swatches never really match the dried paint, so I supplemented the paint colors with my own acrylic colors and this worked really well.

Mimic-ing another artist's paint style was tricky and rewarding. The muralist had a very loose, watery style and since my work is so structured and bright and strong I found it really freeing. At the last minute I grabbed an old wide and pretty battered brush from my studio and thankfully I did because it was the perfect 'texture' brush for this impressionistic and loose feathery mural. Hoorah for impulses.

Cleaning up Graffiti

I actually like Graffiti. You know the kind that is imaginative, colorful, has interesting characters or social commentary and is under a freeway perhaps.

Tagging though... this is not graffiti. This is immature. It's hardly creative.

A local restaurant has a three panel mural on their patio, which was recently tagged. Each panel had black spray writing across it. The owner of the restaurant asked me if I would clean it up and restore the painting underneath, and was it even possible?

I've never cleaned up spray paint, graffiti or any tags but felt so badly for the artwork the taggers defaced, I thought I'd give it a try.

I read up online on Graffiti clean up. So, my first purchase was Mineral Spirits. This did nothing.
Did some more reading, stopped at the local Orchard Supply and found a spray of Graffiti remover. I sprayed that on and used a nylon brush to scrub loose part of the tag, then I lifted it off with the power-washer. LOTS of scrubbing! Not much progress and I was sore! There had to be a better way.

I knew I needed a tougher and longer handled scrub brush, so visited the Ace Hardware in Los Gatos. They happened to have a spray can of something called Goop Off, Graffiti remover so I bought that too.

Now Goop Off WORKS! Spray that over the tag, use a scrub brush and move lightly in small circles over the tag then spray it with the power-washer... and it comes up pretty well.

Next up was the restoration of the painting underneath. Not that the restaurant has kept it in great condition, but it still needed touching up. I fixed up the sky with a mix of house paint and Liquitex acrylic to get the colors just right. Next up is to fix a bit of the greenery and finally, I'll varnish the entire thing!