Urban Canvas 2019 Projects

Whiteaker Neighborhood Traffic Boxes

A partnership with City of Eugene Traffic Operations Team

Dorothy Siemens

Dorothy Siemens Traffic Box

Not Forgotten

Dates painted: November 2019

Location: Whiteaker Neighborhood Traffic Box at 6th & Blair

About the art: “This mural is an exploration of the grieving process, and dedicated to my father, Jimmy Siemens. He was deeply involved in the Whiteaker music scene before he passed away in 2012. It aims to recast grief as not solely a sad state of being - but instead a thing from which we grow and adapt, constantly tying our lives to those who we lost. From death spring life, and so the circle continues.”

About the artist: Dorothy Siemens has found her life’s work in illustrating, drawing, painting, and bringing joy to people through her art. She discovered her style in warm texturized peripheral shapes composed of bold and bright colors and spirited but casual actors.  Using art as a tool to understand how we evolve from the collective experiences of our everyday lives, Dorothy aims to connect people with their communities.  They currently work as a freelance illustrator with a portfolio that includes murals, magazine ads and editorials, band posters, children’s books and everything in between.

Faunwood (Miranda Zimmerman)

Miranda Zimmerman Faunwood

Primordial Soup

Dates painted: November 2019

Location: Whiteaker Neighborhood Traffic Box at 5th & Blair

About the artist: Faunwood grew up in Fresno, California, passing time by illustrating digitally and watching nature documentaries in the background. Her work is influenced by both the real and fictional - often drawing inspiration from mythology and animated stories. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Biology and a minor in Visual Art at California State University Monterey Bay and soon discovered the field of Science Illustration. She likes to create creatures that are engaging, charismatic, and sometimes a little mutated and unsettling.

Nicole Fraley Traffic BoxNicole! (Nicole Fraley)

Dates painted: November 2019

Location: Whiteaker Neighborhood Traffic Box at 6th & Washington

About the artist: Nicole! is a Pacific Northwest born and raised artist.  She is inspired by the ec-centric, the outlaw, the tinkerer, and the odd ball. She has been making art since she was a kid. Past projects include a bathroom in a senior home and a large-scale basalt fountain at LCC. She has also shown her work around town in cafes and bars and now defunct art spaces.

Travis Pendlebury Traffic BoxTravis Pendlebury

Polygeists!, the ghosts in everything

Dates painted: November 2019

Location: Whiteaker Neighborhood Traffic Box at 6th & Jefferson

About the Art: Polygeists are jolly imaginary ghosts who inhabit all matter. I wanted to invoke a feeling of happiness and warmth to the environment to whoever might pass the mural by.

About the artist: Travis Pendlebury is an illustrator and graphic designer who specializes in hand-drawn characters and fantastical creatures.

Wayde Love

Wayde Love Traffic BoxDates painted: November 2019-March 2020

Location: Whiteaker Neighborhood Traffic Box at 1st & Van Buren

About the artist: Wayde started creating art when he was a kid in the 80s, back in North Carolina. Although he took some art classes when he was young, he is mostly self-taught. He has been living in Eugene for 20+ years and currently works for the City of Eugene and teaches art and mindfulness at Kelly Middle School.  He also co-founded the Whiteaker Block Party. Wayde has painted murals at PublicHouse in Springfield, Hay Baby, Cornbread Café, Looking Glass, and Petersen Barn Community Center.

Murals

Pete Goldlust Melanie Germond Garfield Station

Pete Goldlust & Melanie Germond

Good Neighbors

Dates painted: October/November 2019

Wall location: 987 Garfield St., Garfield Station, south wall

About the art: An exterior mural designed to create a playful, colorful, welcoming presence in a neighborhood undergoing revitalization. Friendly robot-creatures are inspired by local efforts at recycling computer components.

About the artists: Pete and his wife and collaborator, Melanie Germond, and their two sons relocated to Eugene from the small artist community of Bisbee, Arizona in 2016. Pete is actively involved in building educational and arts opportunities for youth. Prior to relocating to Oregon, Pete served as Executive Director of Central School Project, a regional arts nonprofit, and was a founding member and Board President of the first licensed Montessori preschool in the area. In Eugene, he has been active with ArtCity, recently helping to coordinate the Studio Without Walls event at the Park blocks this summer, in cooperation with the City of Eugene.

Ila Rose Garfield Station

Ila Rose

we come in peace

Dates painted: September 2019

Wall location: 977 Garfield St., Garfield Station, north wall

About the art: “The Garfield Station mural had the sole prompt of featuring President Garfield somewhere in it and being funny or playful. I knew Pete Goldlust would be painting the building’s opposing wall and was inspired by his designs which seemed to contain simple playful line or pattern of colorful characters. This gave me the idea that Garfield might be floating in space or an alternate dimension with various diverse beings. I tend to try to find symbolism and relevant meaning to the context of current times in any work I create. I saw this intermingling of diverse beings as a symbol of a community rich in cultural diversity, rather than one divided by it. The phrase, ‘we come in peace,’ is often featured in tales of visiting aliens attempting to make peaceful connection in foreign land. This phrase and title, therefore, seemed like the perfect symbolic sentiment to encourage a community that welcomes and celebrates its own unique and diverse population, which is something I hope for in the world and also in my home town, Eugene.” 

About the artist: Ila Rose is a painter/muralist working out of Eugene, OR. She has painted a mural for the 20x21EUG Mural Project in Eugene, another in the new Hayward Field Stadium, and many more in and out of town. Rose works as a professional artist and teacher in Eugene and is passionate about how art and community interact. She believes public art is a vital part of enlivening and enriching community, sharing its diverse stories through images and invoking collective creative thought and positive transformation

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Michael Erickson

EQ

Dates painted: June/July 2019

Wall location: 360 East 11th Avenue, Equinox Real Estate

About the art: EQ was made as a visual representation of the way feelings of home, belonging, movement and emotion could be portrayed through iconic natural imagery. The flow of the piece is meant to show the wave of the summer equinox and its balance. 

About the artist: Michael Erickson has been living in Eugene since 2006. Realizing his love of line and color led him on a self-initiated journey through the realms of graphic artistry. He has worked on a broad spectrum of projects and mediums including apparel design, screen printing, sign painting, video production, stop-motion animation, studio painting and a mural project with the City of Eugene’s Urban Canvas program. Of these, he enjoys mural painting the most. Erickson has completed multiple commissioned mural projects in Lane County. From interior floor level walls, to exterior walls 20 feet tall, his previous creative experience has given him a level of professionalism he is proud to maintain and share with the community today. instagram.com/michaelericksondesign

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Wayde Love

Dates painted: April 2019

Location: Pacific Pub Cycle

About the artist: Wayde started doing art when he was a kid in the 80s back in North Carolina, painting country crafts and selling them to friends and family and at the local markets. Although he took some art classes when he was young, he is mostly self-taught. He has been living in Eugene for 20+ years and is proud to call it his home. He currently works for the City of Eugene and teaches art and mindfulness at Kelly Middle School.  He also organizes the Great Whiteaker Clean Up and was a co-founder of the Whiteaker Block Party. He loves to do what brings him a lot of joy and likes to think his paintings or the space he creates invokes a sense of joy and happiness in others. He uses a lot of bright, contrasting colors and likes to use a lot of shapes and patterns in his work.

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Kathleen Caprario

Mahonia Dreaming

Dates painted: Spring 2019

Wall location: 120 Shelton McMurphey Blvd, Mahonia Building

About the art: Mahonia Dreaming is a response to and a reflection of the values expressed throughout the Mahonia Building and its industrial environmentalist design. It is an homage` to the Willamette Valley and the natural resources that have sustained communities, beginning with the Kalapuya people, for generations. Mahonia Dreaming graphically layers time and space through the identification of pattern and visual movement. A unifying, repeated motif abstracted from the Mahonia Aquifolium plant, known commonly as Oregon Grape, is overlaid across the top and lower portions of the panel. Eugene’s signature ridgeline of Spencer’s Butte is abstracted and represented twice—first as a far distant contour of the Butte and adjacent rolling hills and, second, as a mirror image that contains and from which dense clusters of Oregon Grape, both in its flowered and berry stages, emerge and signal growth. The flight path of a hawk, a sight frequently observed in the Willamette Valley, is dynamically represented by black and white tracking lines as it swoops across the panel, its curved path directing the viewer through the work. Every visual choice from color palette, motifs and patterning to paint handling and technique are designed as an authentic response to the core values of its subject, the Mahonia Building and its context, Eugene.

About the artist: Kathleen Caprario traded the concrete canyons of New York City for the real canyons and broad skies of the Pacific NW and has established herself as a widely exhibited artist and an art educator. Caprario is the recipient of a Jordan Schnitzer Black Lives Matter Artist Grant, an Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship, a Lane Arts Artist Grant, the Modesto Lanzone Mostra Award, OAC Career Opportunity Grants and Ford Family Mid Career Residency Awards, as well as numerous artist residencies. Caprario is a founding member of the creative cohort, Gray Space Project, an artist member of Eugene Contemporary Art and a part time studio instructor for Lane Community College.

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Clayton Sukau

Untitled

Dates painted: Winter/Spring 2019

Locations: 3 traffic boxes located in the Barger area (Barger & Primrose St, Barger & North Terry, Royal & North Terry)

About the art: "I wanted to make art that reflects that we are all connected. By roads and satellites and everything in between. I wanted to convey this message quickly which led to the simple style. I wish I would have used more color but I am still proud of the art, to me it belongs to everybody that drives past."

About the artist: Clayton is from Salem Oregon, where he worked with the Salem Art Association and other galleries and downtown area shows. He moved to Eugene a few years ago and he really loves all of the murals and enjoys being a part of this city’s art culture.