Lofts at Murray Hill Mural
Murray Hill has a brand new mural and artist Philip Bennett Walker has a four story project completed under his belt.
Based on his painting style and growing reputation around North Florida for his latest artwork, Philip was chosen out of many artists for this job.
The design itself was a collaboration between Philip and graphic designer Adina Jarlsberg.
Working with Jessica Santiago of Art Republic and others from Group 4 Design, Inc., an abstract design was agreed upon, and after several meetings the color scheme was nailed down to perfection.
The result is a geometric triangular pattern ascending the building, with bright colors sure to put a smile on anyone’s face that’s passing by.
Now that you have the background details here’s the scoop on how the actual painting process went down.
The mural was started on what happened to be the first week back to school for DUVAL County so you can imagine how traffic was across town, as we navigated from beachside. Once we arrived on that hot August morning, the team got to work unloading and prepping our space. We decided to start at the ground level and work our way up, as the lift wasn’t scheduled to arrive until the next day.
Knocking out as many layers as possible as high as we could go was our goal for the first day, and I have to say we did a damn good job. Despite a few bouts of near heat exhaustion, lots of water and snack breaks, the team felt great about the start to this project.
On day 2 our lift arrived - shout out to Sun Belt for keeping us safe and secure dozens of feet in the air! We also had additional help arrive thanks to Savage Brothers Inc, and owner and friend Jamie Savage connected us with with two of us best men to work this big job.
Philip and the boys completed the middle portion of the building, working their way up while us girls stayed at ground level and tightened up the sharp lines and hit social media up with behind the scenes posts.
The highlight of our day was definitely our pizza lunch from Moon River, and not even the hot weather could stop us from devouring the melty cheesy deliciousness.
On day three, it rained. Hard. Just as we were a few hours from being 100% done, the unpredictable Florida weather showed up and within minutes there was a complete downpour.
Once things dried up we were able to salvage the mural and began working on the last few sections. Of course we got too excited about being done that another curveball just had to be thrown our way.
Just three coats of paint away from being done, the lift ran out of gas. In a mad dash to beat the setting sun we got a tank and extra fuel, and geared back up for round 3 of our final day and finished up the mural by sunset.
Without a doubt this was a challenging yet highly rewarding job. We definitely worked hard, but on our down time the team even made some new friends with other artists and workers at the site that we look forward to seeing around town! It was an honor to make the idea come to life in the vibrant Murray Hill neighborhood of Jacksonville, and we look forward to future opportunities with this group.
