Wrapping up: Final touches from SHINE muralists

Part 3 of a real-time series focusing on two of the 14 murals being created for this week’s 9^th annual SHINE Mural Festival. The site is 2875 7th Avenue S., in the Warehouse Arts District.

Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Wallmates: Chihan “James” Lee, left, Bryan Beyung and Loretta Lizzio.

Day 7 (Thursday, Oct. 19). By mid-week, the murals-in-progress from artists Bryan Beyung and Loretta Lizzio are starting to pop. Beyung and his fellow muralist Chihan “James” Lee have brought the four members of the Cambodian family – the center of their 90×25 foot concrete canvas – to life, adding facial details and lines of depth to the figures and the road they’re standing on.

Adapted from a 1980s photograph, the portrait depicts Beyung’s friend Anhdi Kien– he’s the smallest child – with his parents and his sister, leaving their homeland.

Kien, fully grown now and with children of his own, lives in Bradenton and is closely following the mural’s progress.

To the left of the central tableau, Beyung has created a separate image, depicting a white tree, a black sky and a crescent moon. “This is Anhdi’s daughter’s drawing,” the artist explains. “She’s around 7.  The sun is there, and the moon is coming. She wrote ‘absent’ because when the moon is up, the sun is absent. I thought that was beautiful.”

A solid red square has been painted in. This, says Beyung, will feature Cambodian textile patterns, with some of the images based on drawings by Anhdi’s son.

A line of salmon swimming under the central image connects one side of the massive panel to the other, where Lee has painted a shimmering, blue-and-white scene that resembles a classic Asian woodblock print.

“It’s an abstraction of the ocean,” Lee says, “of waves crashing into each other. And in the foreground, there are more abstract elements.’ He calls it “a more emotional kind of mark-making.’”

Lee explains the water imagery, along with the running salmon, connects to the emigrating family … and the child’s drawing.

“It all ties into the idea of migration, and the journey across the sea.”

The overall composition was influenced by graphic design; which both Beyung and Lee have backgrounds in. Usually, Beyung creates vertical or portrait murals; the horizontal SHINE canvas, at first, perplexed him. “So we tried to find a way that would be interesting, and also a bit unusual.”

Still to come: Tweaking and details. They’ll fix a line here and there, and another drawing will likely go into a bright green area at the top.

“It’s not finished yet – but maybe our look can somehow feel unfinished in some areas,” Beyung says. “There must be space in every painting. We don’t need to block in everything.”

Thursday, Oct. 19. Loretta Lizzio sprays in the sirens’ flowing hair.

Lizzio, meanwhile, is high up in her hydraulic lift, applying green spray paint to her work, which she has titled The Sirens Call (the three mermaid/sirens in her mural are alluringly peering, and beckoning, from waving strands of kelp) and brown and black (for the ladies’ flowing hair).

From her perch, she explains that visitors address her frequently. “You can never have a big ‘ol chat,” Lizzio says. “Most people don’t stop for a chat; it’s like ‘I like it!,’ and I say thanks, and that’s generally it, really. You don’t want to interrupt the flow of your work.”

Next, she says, she’ll turn the lift off for a few hours.

“I’m leaving the bottom for tomorrow, to do on foot.”

Beyung, Lee and Lizzio all say they’ll be wrapping up Saturday.

Day 8 (Friday, Oct. 20):

The final day (Saturday, Oct. 21). The journey of Anhdi Kien and his family – from the 1970s to the present day – resonated with Beyung. Merely painting something pretty, he says, feels like an empty creative endeavor. “I need some sort of story to inspire me. Anhdi was someone I knew, so it seemed like a good fit. I thought, ‘He knows the place really, really well.’ He used to live here; then he moved to Montreal for 10 years, because he fell in love. But all his family was living here, so he came back. I think his roots are here.”

At noon, Beyung and Lee are waiting for Andhi and his children to arrive from Bradenton. They’ve left several sections blank for the young ones to paint directly onto the mural. Somehow, Beyung explains, that seemed fitting.

Once that’s accomplished, and after a few more touches and re-touches, they’ll call the as-yet-untitled mural finished. Then it’s back to Montreal.

Beyung looks at his work with a mixture of pride and exhaustion. “We wanted to experiment,” he says. “We didn’t want to come here and just feel safe, and paint one image. We wanted to challenge ourselves. We’ve been changing stuff as we go along, changing colors, so I feel it’s been quite organic. I’ve really enjoyed the process of painting this with James. We’re really happy with the end result.”

Lizzio completed The Sirens Call ahead of schedule, on Friday night, but today’s she’s returned to the site to shoot a few photos.

Overall, she’s happy with the image of three underwater women. “I wanted the background color to pop a bit more, but I had to order my paints while I was still home in Australia,” she confesses. “Sometimes you get a pot of paint and it’s slightly different to what you see on your screen.”

Oh well. “I did the best with what I had and yeah, I think it turned out OK.”

“The Sirens Call” by Loretta Lizzio.