Client: The Pizzuti Companies

Overview

TEAMWORK MADE IT HAPPEN! The stingray team was selected by The Pizzuti Companies to produce murals on functioning train bridges from artwork created by artist Alex Dodge. stingray coordinated and executed the murals on site working directly with Alex Dodge, The Pizzuti Companies, CSX Transportation and The Columbus Crew.

Goals

The goal of the artwork was to develop a sense of community between the Crew and the fans coming to see them play in their new stadium. Alex created scaled renderings of the original artwork which had to be translated to a 3-Dimensional surface that was both no flat or smooth AND was in continuous use by the railroad. Our goal was be faithful to Alex's work and vision while completing the challenging execution to the satisfaction of the Pizzuti team, the Columbus Crew organization, the City of Columbus and the railroad operations team.

Process

In order to complete the project successfully, stingray had to coordinate creatively with the artist, Alex Dodge, via digital communication to ensure that we delivered a finished project that was to his expectations and represented his work positively. Once the artwork was completed and the colors specified, the stingray team painstakingly created a series of templates, visual references and mixed paint colors. All were shared with Alex and The Pizzuti Companies team for review / approval. Full scale mock ups were also created; both to give Alex and the Pizzuti team a sense of how the finished project would look, but also to give us a chance to work with the materials and to dial in the production processes.

We also had to collaborate with the CSX Transportation team as the bridges were all operational with trains moving regularly over them.

Finally, we had to coordinate with the city regarding job-site safety, traffic control - both auto & pedestrian - and material handling as we basically set up an outdoor art studio and used the sidewalks as staging and production areas.