Client: Farmer's Daughter Hotel

Overview

My installation consists of 40 1ft x 2ft sheets of plexiglass painted on the reverse side with acrylic paint. The pieces follow 20 steps up the stairs, so they are stacked in columns of 2 of these sheets vertical, heading up the stars 20 feet. So the whole piece is 4ft x 20ft, although as the move up the stairs there is a 7inch step up for each column.

Goals

The hotel had murals there previously which were simple, gingham-based design. We wanted to elaborate on that with a more complex, artistic approach. So, I took the original design, but changed to a more muted palette and added a notion of subtle, complicated beams of light which give the illusion of light crossing over the pattern and affecting the pattern in different, unexpected ways.

Process

I was brought into the process by June Street Architects who have worked with the hotel in various capacities over the years. The hotel was excited to work with an artist to create a beautiful public statement. The owner viewed my murals at June Street's location and paid my 25% of the fee to commence my designs. After coming up with various options of Photoshop composites, we agreed upon two designs. I then mapped out the colors of each shape in the design and found the Benjamin Moore colors which most closely corresponded to those colors. In the end, each mural was comprised of 76 colors. The painters were provided the map and used it as a kind of "paint by numbers". They recreated the linear design using chalk lines and applied the colors associated with each shape painting from top to bottom. The two paintings took approximately 4 weeks to complete.

Additional Information

The murals are on the busy Fairfax Avenue, where literally thousands of cars drive by daily, and it is across the street from The Grove and Farmer's Market, which is one of the biggest shopping and tourist areas of Los Angeles.