April 2015
10 ft (120") x 8 ft (96”)
Permanent ink marker on indoor white wall paint
Ryder Hall, Northeastern University, Boston MA

In Spring of 2015, I was a sophomore, but it was only my second semester in my design major. I was in a few art basics courses, and for my final in one of my drawing classes, I proposed an ink mural in a nearby hallway. I didn't have a plan, but rather a loose collection of recent doodles, and a general concept of the overall scale. After meeting about the proposal I drew up, administrators in the College of Arts, Media, and Design accepted my mural concept, and I started in mid-April. I spent two weeks drawing on the wall, starting at the bottom left corner. I taped previous work to the walls as reference, but the mural took on a life of its own.

I loved talking to people as I worked, when they walked between classes or went to nearby bathrooms. They were excited to see the mural evolve from one day to the next, and that's when I fell in love with public art. People were experiencing the growth of a piece of art right in front of them, and felt more ownership towards it than something they'd see in an art museum.

I learned a huge amount on this mural—most notably, that some mistakes are permanent, and you have to find ways to work around them, or transform them into something else completely. There wasn't a pencil sketch or detailed plan for the mural—I started in ink, and added things as they organically fit. Some of my worst problem areas, where I had committed to a pattern too early, or messed up the scale, became points of growth; I stepped outside my comfort zone, and chose to do something differently. This mural was my very first introduction to doing art outside of a sketchbook, and I was incredibly lucky to have so much support in CAMD, and specifically, Professor Sophia Ainsley.

Explore the details and process of the mural below.