"Superbloom" asphalt mural comes to life

In March of this year, I was tagged in the comments of an instagram post from Downtown Little Rock Partnership by a dear friend of mine. The post image was a photo of the intersection of 13th and South Main Street in downtown Little Rock with "Your art here" in big text. I was super intrigued by the idea.

Looking into the submission process and the RFQ, I found that the project was privately funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies #AsphaltArtIniative. Bloomberg has supported over 90 beautification projects for communities since 2022, with Little Rock being one of 25 selected cities to receive the grant in 2024. What an opportunity! However, at the time, I was super busy with my full-time job and thought "I'll come back to this." Well, time passed and the Downtown Partnership posted a deadline reminder and the same sweet pal tagged me in the comments. The deadline was 12am that evening. I got home from work late, and at 11pm I began to draft a design to submit. The first thing that came to my mind was flowers! The only photo of the intersection I had was from an angle, and I was using the "perspective warp" tool in my design software to match the flowers to the space. Tired from the day, I started to get frustrated and started thinking... "Well, what do I know about murals, anyway?" I considered closing my laptop and going to bed. 

My boyfriend Gabe was like "C'mon, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. Just finish it and submit it!" So, I did just that. I got my rough design image to where I wanted it by 11:45pm. Before sending my submission email, I went back to check the RFQ to make sure I had everything they were requesting. To my surprise, my tired eyes misread that I didn't need a design for this stage — just a resume and an artist statement. So quickly, I found my resume, gathered my artist statement, and still included my proposed design. In my email with the submission, I said something along the lines of "I've never done something like this... but I'd really love to!" At 11:59pm, it was submitted.

Here's the very first draft of my proposed design:

A day or two later, I'm at work and received a call from the Director of the Downtown Partnership. He was calling to let me know that I had been selected as a finalist for the project! He told me that I had two weeks to come up with a finalized design. I took this as an opportunity to look into all aspects of what this installation would entail, and put together a full proposal. It took me all of the two weeks to gather the information, finalize the placement, get a drone photo of the intersection, and design the proposal itself. I decided to stick with the flower concept for the final design, as I felt the task at hand was to create something that made sense in the street — a simple, legible design that would be visible from all angles — with uplifting and happy imagery. The point was to heighten pedestrian safety, not to endanger pedestrians with a complicated design. Bloomberg thankfully has amazing resources and guides on asphalt art, which were so helpful! You can find all their projects with costs and supplies broken down at this link: https://asphaltart.bloomberg.org/projects/

Here's some images from my proposal: 

It was 2-3 weeks until I heard anything else about the project. I stayed quiet about the whole thing, even though I was dying to know more... It wasn't until my mom texted me that there was a post from the Downtown Partnership asking the public to vote in a survey on the proposed final designs.

Here's what all of the designs looked like:

The survey was up for vote for almost 2 weeks. I was contacted at the close of the survey by the Downtown Partnership in early May that my design received the most votes from the public, and that it would be coming to life. I couldn't believe it! I started crying because I was so excited. However, excitement aside, I had some logistics to figure out on how exactly to go about installing flowers in the street.

For paint, Bloomberg suggested using Streetbond 150 by Gaf. I was put in contact with a contractor who sells the product in my area, owner and operator of Crossroads Decorative Pavement, an asphalt art installation company. Crossroads has over 30 years experience applying art onto city streets and was an amazing resource to be connected with in doing this type of project. Streetbond 150 is custom paint made for use on asphalt. I provided Pantone swatches of the colors in my design and sent them off to have samples made for me to approve and order. It took about 3 weeks to get the drawdowns back, and another 2 weeks for the paint to be made and shipped.

Here's my final color samples:

While waiting on paint, I explored the various ways I could make this 52ft x 42ft installation happen in 2 days in the Arkansas summer heat. After lots of research, I determined that it would be a logistical nightmare/time suck if we didn't have a tiled stencil of the design that we could just mark out and remove. So, I got in contact with a company that makes stencils for football fields. After double, triple, quadruple checking the dimensions, I sent over my design file and placed the order. (I was sooo nervous about this being the right size.) It came as two giant pieces that fit together, covering the intersection with perforated flower outlines. This is so we could use marking paint as a guide for all of the flower placements. 

Here's a picture of what this looked like in the street:

To streamline the process and make for crispy lines, spraying the paint's first coat seemed like the best option. However, if that was going to work, we needed firm stencils! So, I contacted a family friend of mine who fabricates wood. There were about 9 different flower sizes, and I had him make stencils of each size flower and the center circles. Some of the flowers were too big for his machine to make as one piece, so some sizes were just individual petals. (The largest flowers in the design were 16ft in diameter!)

Here's a picture of what one of the smaller firm stencils looked like:

The installation weekend was rescheduled due to some city-related stuff. The official installation dates became June 29-30. The road was closed to be cleaned on June 28, and left closed as it needed to be completely dry and clear of debris before we began the installation. I was totally expecting this project to take all of the two allotted days! Seeing a hefty chance of rain on the 30th, we started laying stencils the evening of the 28th to make up for potential lost time. We put in about 4 hours of work the first night, marking all of the flowers and laying the primer.

Here's a picture of how we left it the first night:

Bright and early at 6am the morning of the 29th, I set out with my team: Shelly, Daniel, Gabby, Paul, John, April, Harold, Adan, Francisco and Jesus. Two trucks with trailers in a blocked intersection, and we were off! It began to heat up quickly. The heat index of the day was 111 degrees. It was so hot, delirium set in at times. We were all doing our best to stay hydrated. And, to our surprise, the paint was drying even faster than what we had planned! We started with yellow, then to pink, to purple, orange and red. Community volunteers were scheduled to start at 2pm that day. I wanted to make sure we were done with stenciling by the time their shifts started, to make things easier for everyone and minimize room for error. Even in the most intense conditions, Morgan, Sophie, Emily, Caroline, Jacob, Landon, Kelli, Rachel, Lynn and Van came through to help lay down the final coats on the blooms. They were truly rock stars and absolutely crucial in finishing this project! I am endlessly grateful for their help and dedication!

Here are some pictures:

 

After a total of 18 hours of labor, 65 gallons of paint, in 111 degree heat index, we ended the day at about 8pm that night — with the installation fully complete, a whole day early.

 

 Here's a video documenting the project:

The support I have felt from Little Rock through this project has been nothing short of amazing. My heart is forever warm and I can't thank everyone enough. I want to extend an utmost thank you to the individuals and entities who made this project possible: