Not Enough Canvas? No problemo!
As Salina and I (josh) got started working on mural designs, we decided to do a few different things:
a) The mural would be temporary, so that each year of seed project, we could invite a new artist to create an artwork in that space.
b) We would paint on canvas and attach it to the wall. Somos Semillas was planned in the Fall of 2020, when a third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic was in full force. We both agreed a canvas that we could cut and split up between our two studios would be an interesting way to make to create this work.
c) The installation would be collaborative: we would have prompts and pieces folks in the neighborhood can create to add to the mural themselves.
Check out some of our initial sketches below!
Somos Semillas: early composition sketch
hand sketches by Salina Almanzar
We were excited by our ideas and ready to move forward, but then we realized something: we didn’t have enough canvas to cover the whole wall! Our budget was tapped and that led us to put our heads together and think through another solution. The composition mock up below is what we came up with. We would hang our pieces like a salon style gallery. The Salon Style method of hanging is comprised of creating a “crowd” of paintings, both complimenting and juxtaposing one another. Works are placed in groups of different sizes, next to and above each other.
salon style composition study
We are so excited to put up these pieces on Memorial Day weekend! We’ll have plenty of activities and artworks for folks of all ages to make!
Somos Semillas (We Are Seeds) #1
It all begins with an idea.
During the summer of 2020, Salina and I (josh) began meeting each week to plan what would become seed project. We weren’t to sure what to do, we just knew what we could do because of the COVID-19 pandemic—no in-person gatherings, workshops, meals or events. No public art interactions as we knew it and spent years developing in our work. What do we do?!
We spent the rest of the year trying to figure that out and by November we had a sketch for our first year: virtual workshops, zine publications, community member meetings and a temporary mural at Plaza Centro—the new business center at Duke and Chesapeake Streets.
Before we even called ourselves seed project, we were talking about this mural and using seeds as a metaphor for who we are as a vibrant and powerful Southeast community. We started compiling images that we like that could be good inspiration—past works from Salina and I, vejigantes (a folkloric character in Caribbean festival celebrations) and plants. We also realized we couldn’t paint a mural together in person. We decided to buy a roll of canvas to split between the two of us to paint in our own homes, which we would them adhere to the mural wall.
digital sketch by Salina Almanzar
photo of Dominican vejigantes
painting detail by josh graupera
After spending some time thinking through what we wanted to create, we ordered canvas and paint and began to focus on the wall: the south wall of Brother’s SuperMAX Grocery Store.