Photo by Peter Hinsdale
Elisabeth and Christophe Ridet, founders of the international dance wear brand Wear Moi, approached me late in 2021 to see if I would be interested in creating a piece on the side of their beautiful brick building where their store is located. Lake View East Chamber of Commerce was funding the project.
They loved the series of work I created in 2018 with Hubbard Street Dance Company depicting dancers coming through ornate gold frames, and wondered if we could make something similar:
After a couple rounds of mock-ups, we decided we’d like to recreate the piece “Hide & Seek” on a grand scale (depicting dancer Jacqueline Burnett)
A bit of the process in making the original painting:
We sent the artwork to Lake View East Chamber of Commerce and the building owner for approval, and thank goodness they loved the piece too. Now we just needed to wait for a window of decent weather.
I started the piece mid April 2022, with an exterior masonry paint as the first layer. I’ve found that on brick, it helps knock off any loose mortar and gives a good base. From there I made a doodle grid. A lot of people wondered why I wrote all over the wall and then covered it up. Creating these marks and then matching the mock up to the doodles allowed me to lay out the piece proportionally.
The rest of the mural was created with 13 colors of spray paint. It’s the most detailed large scale mural I’ve done. It took a total of 9 days of painting over a 2 week period. Here are a few photos throughout (the good photos are by Peter Hinsdale):
And finally, a time-lapse of the piece from start to finish (cut and edited by Ben Hood) :
A huge thank you to Maureen and the Lake View East Chamber of Commerce for funding the project. Thank you to Christophe, Elisabeth and everyone at Wear Moi for fascilitating the creation of the piece! They made it such a fun project. To Jacqueline Burnett and Hubbard Street Dance for the inspiration. And last but not least, this piece would have never happened without a very important introduction from Marie-Pierre Rondeau :) thank you for believing in me and my work.