Mural season intensifies
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It is so tired to talk about how summer quickly the summer goes by, but honestly, August already? I’ve never completely shaken off the grade-school mindset that summer is strictly three months starting in June. Apparently my body clock hasn’t internalized climate change. *Proceeds without further reflection*
When I need to ground myself in space and time, I need only look to my watch-shaped tan line and the fresh paint stains in and on my car: it’s mural season! I’ve wrapped up my two first outdoor projects of the year, and I’m preparing for three upcoming murals – each is a collaboration of a different kind.
Glass, glass or glass
Regular perusers may recognize this design from when I wrote about applying to this mural gig in June
This was my first time ever painting on glass, and that went fine! I noticed some of my colors had more trouble adhering than others – in spots they formed a film and started to peel off, but I was able to fix this when it happened. The thing I was most worried about with this project was not the new substrate but just timing. I technically had two days to paint this before leaving for a trip, but having to spend the second day on it would have set me back in numerous ways.
Succeeding at painting this in one day was empowering. Because of the nature of most of my past murals, I didn’t go in feeling especially confident about my ability to paint this in one shot. My past murals have tended to be very (sometimes extremely) detailed, and for a lot of my muraling career I haven’t known how to bring about pricing that will allow me to hire assistants. All that to say, I’ve done a lot of projects that felt like they just took forever.
Because of this, I was seriously considering flaking on the project completely and telling the organizers to pull from the artist waitlist – that seemed preferable to leaving my window half-baked, should it come to that. Travis offered this advice: “Just send it!” And so I resolved to do so.
Jokey phrasing aside, this is a fairly profound mindset shift for me. I’m really good at working hard; working smart is a much newer muscle. When I was in high school, I got into the habit of judging my own work by the effort I put in, as much or more as the actual results. I’ve been reflecting on this lately, and I think it’s served as a way of insulating myself against feelings of disappointment and inferiority. I can’t really control how much people like my work, ultimately, but I can tell myself I’ve outworked the competition and find some solace in that. The issue is that maximum expenditure of effort isn’t actually the goal. Hard work can be in service of a goal, but if it supplants or distracts from the real goal, that’s a problem. The real goal is making a lot of good art that people can see and enjoy, that I feel good about, and that leaves me well-paid!
So this mural season I’m trying to send it. What does that look like in practice?
Not procrastinating my prep work; I’m not going to feel more ready tomorrow. Start the first draft, pull out the projector, make the supplies list.
When painting, remember that almost nobody is going to get lost in the details the way that I can – not even my client. The important thing is to get the paint down. A good-faith rendering of color, shape, tone and crucial elements will get across what is meant to get across to almost every viewer.
I have spent many hours or even days on many projects re-doing minor things, failing to advance because I got lost in the weeds on something subtle, or using an incredibly time-consuming process where a more streamlined one was available, because I thought that would allow me to create murals that were more strictly accurate to my proposed design. Some things matter a lot, of course, and are worth the time to get it right. But many details or distinctions will not register one way or the other – their mere presence as part of the composition is enough to impact the viewer’s experience, not contingent on if they are perfectly rendered.
If I had approached the window in my typical way, the opportunity to make it a day-long project would have quickly vanished (I had a hard stop in order to make it to a Council meeting on time). Various tweakable elements called to me as I worked: adjusting the size of the green and yellow bubbles relative to each other; changing the shape of the orange squiggle, or even scraping and re-doing the dotted part to make it more “charismatic” (my internal word for good painted shapes); fixing the stars and the street-map textures to match exactly how I’d sketched them. I declined these impulses, reminding myself to prioritize getting all the paint down first. I could go back to make changes if I ended up having extra time. And, some things that felt imperfect partway through might end up feeling like no big deal in the context of a fully-drafted mural.
I ended up liking the finished product more than my design, maybe because the orange doesn’t feel so prominent in the painted version. What do you think?
That tension between perfection and good-enough is an interesting one, especially when useful language overlaps. I just finished Alone on the Wall by Alex Honnold (the free solo guy) and his co-writer David Roberts. In climbing, to send it means to go and do it – approach the challenge with the intent to succeed. The crux of the book (and the documentary about Alex, which I also rewatched recently) is when he sends El Capitan, a towering granite wall in Yosemite. Alex’s chosen specialty (to free solo is to climb without a rope or protection) is so fundamentally dangerous that deciding when to send is a very niche calculus: only when he is so practiced and expert at a particular route that doing it perfectly will feel not just achievable but even easy. In his case, that’s what is required for the intent to succeed to be in good faith. My threshold is so much lower! I am practicing both painting efficiently, and wanting to be efficient.
Reading Alex’s firsthand account of climbing and many specific climbing adventures resonated with me in a way I wasn’t expecting. Obviously there is no technical overlap between climbing and painting, but some mental/experiential ingredients stood out to me. Muraling can be logistically challenging, and it can certainly be physically demanding; I really like the endurance/stamina aspect that comes in when painting under the constraints of weather and a deadline. For me, these conditions can approximate flow state: high stakes (even if they’re self-imposed or imaginary) and the knowledge that I have what it takes to pull the project off if I focus and hold on. It’s hard for me to get bored or have ennui creep in when I’m onsite (even better, when outside) and in public. I often get pissed off at murals because of weather, driving, logistics, people; and then a project will remind me that nothing I do leaves me feeling more satisfied.
Salsa 2.0
Speaking of people: I was back in Roslindale in the first days of August to repaint one of the eight sidewalk murals I created last summer as part of my Dance Your Way Downtown series commissioned by Roslindale Village Main Streets (dance diagrams, choreographed by local dancers, translated into murals by yours truly). The people of Roslindale are so lovely. Friendly, kind, pleasant folks to paint around. It is sometimes hard to feel comfortable working in public, but this is never an issue in Rozzie.
Except for this one lady! who was very upset to find that yet another sidewalk mural was happening. “How is this funded?” she asked me. “It’s a state grant, administered by the Main Streets organization,” I replied. “So the taxpayers,” she said snarkily, rolled her eyes, and walked away with her dog (who I was later told is a problem dog at the farmer’s market – if I’m gossiping about a random woman why not gossip about her dog too?).
Based on the other feedback I received I think this series has been pretty popular among the locals, so I’ll happily take it. A couple days later, out of curiosity, I took a stab at the math. My estimate is that MA taxpayers chipped in roughly four ten-thousandths of a cent each for this $2,000 beautification grant. 😉
A group shot from our Art Walk last July – RVMS staff and volunteers, dance step choreographers, community members, a dog, and me!
Speaking of which
I am actively scheming to bring Dance Steps murals to more communities, applying the same formula of connecting and working with local dancers/dance teachers to contribute the dance steps; designing them visually; and painting them on community-curated locations around village centers, main streets, downtowns, etc. This is a very collaborative process that I think is best when it involves a lot of participants (me, assistants, choreographers, location curators, funders, translators) and gives the most number of people a meaningful role.
So: Do you have a claim to a piece of sidewalk in your community or know someone who does? Are you interested in bringing this to your neighborhood? For real, let me know. It goes like this: find the interest and then find the money to make it happen. So if you have reason to think your downtown, business community, Chamber of Commerce, neighbor network, etc. might be intrigued, let’s talk further about how to tailor this concept to be maximally fun and involving for your community.
So we beat on, boats against the current
Lots of sky-related textures and silhouettes in my personal work lately! Last week I sent (😏) this illustration I started working on in June. I’m really happy with how it turned out. I have started a couple new drafts that also center around cloud shapes and the color blue.
If you like it, let me know! It’s really easy for me to throw individual illustrations up as prints on my Etsy.
Befowled
I backed up every single drawing in my Procreate drawing app earlier this week which caused an overwhelming sense of peace to descend over me and also reminded me of two Befowled portraits from March that I never posted. You know, that thing where people send me their professional headshots and I draw cartoon chickens into them. Here’s one of Martin whom I do not know at all but he looks very nice.
Because I promised to do so on Instagram, I am opening up two more slots for Befowled portraits. If you have a LinkedIn headshot, yearbook photo, or passport pic that could use a little something special – or if you have a photo of a friend to whom you’d like to give a confusing gift – hit reply. First two people to respond get a chicken for free.
The sexiest salad you’ll ever hear about
I will be honest: I have barely been cooking and when I have been cooking, I have often been burning it. Don’t get me wrong, I eat almost all of my meals at home, it’s just that heating (other than hot water and toaster) is usually not involved. It’s summer, blah blah.
So when I got the opportunity to do some fun cooking a couple weekends ago – hosting a belated birthday lunch for one of my dearest friends who also happens to have excellent taste – I turned to the most beautiful cookbook in my possession, Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden.
A melon: I had access to a mediocre cantaloupe but I recommend getting any melon that you think will be genuinely tasty
Tomatoes: I used 5-6 regular grocery store tomatoes but if I made it again I would go to the farmer’s market, baby!
A jar of Calabrian hot peppers in oil
A small handful of basil
Two balls of BURRATA!
Red wine vinegar
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Cut the melon into thin wedges. Cut the tomatoes into wedges, or just chop them. Chop up most of the jar of hot peppers. Combine in a big bowl. Add red wine vinegar and olive oil – start with a 1:2 ratio, then taste and adjust. Add a good amount of salt and a lot of pepper. Let it sit in the fridge for a while to let everyone get to know each other. When you’re about to eat, chop the basil into ribbons and add, and tear the burrata and add that too. Let’s go Barbie!
News you can use
My friend Joelle is a graphic design celebrity and her new website looks cooler than ever. She does exhibition design, logos and brand identities, and so much more.
My friends at the Harvard Ed Portal are looking for a new Arts Program Coordinator. Could it be you?
Star alert! Sam, a friend from college, runs Burlington-based handmade menswear company Slow Process. Joe Jonas (yes, that one) was photographed wearing one of his pieces at a performance recently ⭐
And lastly
I’m fixing the sticker, no thanks to you!
Thanks for reading!
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Until next time,
Kit
