Stop and see the roses... and zinnias and billy balls and forget-me-nots.
For more than a month, Reno-based artist Erik Burke has been painting a mural depicting two bouquets that is 150 feet wide and more than 70 feet high on the parking garage just south of the Center Street and Pine Street intersection.
Though the background is black and royal blue, it is punctuated by bright pops of bubblegum pink, scarlet red, saffron gold and some baby blossoms of blue violet.
(Continue reading for the entire story of what this mural means to the artist.)
The artist — whose work can be seen all about murals in midtown and downtown Reno — chose the subject for a number of reasons, for its beauty, its symbolism, but also the fact that it might save the building if it's every eyed for demolition, like so many other unappreciated, "ugly" buildings in town, he said.
To this point, the mural has been informally entitled "Bouquet," though Burke said he often thinks of the titles after he's finished his works.
The mural, which took 115 gallons of paint and 80 cans of spray paint, was commissioned by the owners of the Center and Pine Lofts apartment complex and was partially funded by the City of Reno's Art Belongs Here grant.
Burke completed the mural Tuesday and talked to the Reno Gazette Journal about the origin of the stunning urban art piece.
Editor's note: This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
For those who haven't seen it, can you describe what we’re looking at in the mural?
To me, I see abstractions of color. Everyone else sees these bouquets of ornate, baroque flowers. When I look at it, and I'm up on the lift (the cherry picker), I see form and color. The smallest flower is wider than my wingspan.
Really, I’m just playing with color. A bouquet is just an old, decorative way of sprucing up everything. It’s the easiest image to get everyone on board to save an old building... It makes us want to save things and make us wonder why do we keep tearing things down?
Last time we spoke, you were really into native plants, particularly weeds, so I’m curious to hear why you chose to depict these curated bouquets of vibrant flowers.
The first time I painted flowers was 2012 in Miami. To me, graffiti is flowers because flowers just pop up where they're planted, and then they die, just like graffiti. You put graffiti up, and it's not there the next day because someone covered it up. It’s a good Trojan horse to put out there because people don’t like graffiti, but they do like flowers.
You can't get flowers without a few weeds popping in your yard. Also, after years of making work for clients, you start to know what will get approved and what will get shot down. It’s a nice middle ground, but at the same time it's really pretty. The gangster kids and the grandmas both say, 'That’s so pretty.'
Those flowers look almost photo realistic. How the heck do you accomplish that?
It's all luck. I just color the wall, and I say, 'I hope it looks right.'
But seriously...
It’s just everything that I've learned up to this point. What I initially did was set up a photo shoot with a photographer (Christian Thomas), and I worked with a florist (Shannon Hynes) and we arranged a bunch of flowers just as I wanted them.
(He later explains to the Reno Gazette Journal that the florist "fluffed" the flowers by putting them outside and turning them in a certain direction in order to get them to open just so perfectly.)
And then we took a photo and turned it into an image. I put a grid on top of that image. Essentially I put a dot every six feet, and so I had to make a quarter of an inch square into a six feet square.
Painting is kinda like baking, so you can’t make a good painting if the ingredients suck, so we had to make sure initially it was the perfect image. I guess too the trick of painting is to not overthink it and let people’s eyes fill it in. It's really an illusion.
The weather's been pretty rough the past few weeks between the cold, wind, rain and snow. What's it like painting in those conditions?
It’s kind of, in a way, ideal. Growing up here, I like painting in the winter more because painting in the summer, it dries too fast. The colder it is, the pressure (for spray painting) is lower so the paint comes out slower, so it's more like oil painting. On a hot day, the paint just flies out.
For painting, this weather is perfect. As for me, it’s not ideal – I’m freezing, my feet are wet.
Is it all spray paint?
I have a huge gigantic paint brush. People don't believe me when I tell them I paint details with it. And then spray paint. I had to paint the wall three times: first with primer, black for background, and then there’s the picture. The black in the background, it makes it more like a Dutch master painting, like a (Johannes) Vermeer.
Murals are becoming a really popular way to give cities a fresh look. What are the upsides and downsides of that trend, for the artists and for the community?
It has pros and cons for sure. One of the cons is typically (murals) go into devalued portions of the town. It's architectural cosmetology. It's much cheaper than a new build. It's a quick way to raise the value of the neighborhood, so it is connected to the price hike of the property value. I do see it as part of the gentrification cog, but at the same time it's making these parts of the community more beautiful and it's raising morale, it makes people walk. People are passing through Reno, and they walk away with better things to say about Reno. More people are (painting murals) now, though, too and it creates more competition. Some people are doing it for free, which takes away from the people that are making a living off of it.
Who are some of the artists that you look to for inspiration?
A lot of contemporary Spanish painters. In general, in the states, they don’t quite get it. In Spain, they get it. They get the lighting. Mohamed l' Ghacham, Axel Void (Ivan Floro), Sebas Velasco, and Elisa Capdevila.
Speaking of other places... You recently returned from Ukraine, and you’ve traveled to other parts of the world to paint murals. Do you have any interesting stories about your travels and the people you've met in your career?
Once, I was in Atlanta and it was a really big deal. I was in Summerville, which is outside of Atlanta and we were staying at Howard Finster's house and museum and we were doing a mural about him. He was this insane artist who made album covers for the Talking Heads.
I decided to do a mosaic, and the community heard about it and someone brought a mirror to break, and we used the pieces in the mural, and then all these people started bringing mirrors and we were just breaking them.
Then it got better. There's this rapper I really liked, Killer Mike, he started this group you may have heard of, Run The Jewels. He has a barber shop in this hood area and I was about to get married, so I went to the barber shop, the Flag Shop, that he owns. It was hilarious because it was a really black barber shop, and the barber was saying he never cuts white guys' hair.
My friend knew Mike and texted him that I was getting my haircut and it'd be awesome if came down to visit and he ended up showing up and just sat down and talked with me while I was getting my hair cut.
Also, in Ukraine, an old lady invited me into her house and gave me all these jellies and a blessing in Russian that I didn't understand at all. That's a shorter story.
Wait, so did you end up getting married in Atlanta?
No, I ended up getting married at American Flats (which is now torn down, the site was an abandoned cyanide mill that turned into a haven for graffiti artists). We turned it into a church. We made made a mosaic on the walls with mirrors and the graffiti was reflected, and we found all these barrels and stuffed them.
The sheriff gave me a head's up and warned me that he would try to have his guys not patrol the area that day because technically we'd be trespassing, but he warned we could still get arrested. That'd be cool though to get arrested during the wedding.
You do come from a graffiti background, which has landed you in jail... and you mentioned that these days you do what you can to make the client happy. Does that ever feel uncomfortable considering your rebel roots?
Not really. It's hard coming from a graffiti background and having people think you're soft for painting flowers (laughs).
I'd rather make something that connects fully with more people than just paint something that connects to me, or my friends. Art is selfish. You show something to a client and it will get whittled away, and after years of that you have to skip over that part and ask your client, 'What do you want, what does this neighborhood want, what belongs here?' You kind of have to move past yourself. Which is cool because you end up with more variety.
You’ve painted every kind of surface, walls, tunnels, water towers… what’s it like painting something in the middle of nowhere vs. painting in the middle of the urban landscape?
Not too much of a difference. The environment plays into it, but painting is time traveling, it's like meditation, where everything disappears. Fifteen minutes or 8 hours can fly by. I'm here or there, but it doesn't really matter because you're so in the moment.
But personally, I love finding super remote places where someone can stumble upon it. It's also in the instances where you get to be selfish. There's no client here, you can do that thing that keeps getting rejected.
So, last question. This feels a bit silly, but I’ve noticed that you paint profiles of people’s faces often, and they’re frequently looking up, down or to the side… Why?
It's more of a device so that people won't feel intimidated because I feel like when someone is looking towards you it makes it feel more confrontational. When you look at someone looking away, someone looks deeper. There's one that I made where the person is looking up and it's a (biblical) reference to the Book of Matthew so it's intentionally spiritual because it's in an area (on East Fourth Street in Reno) where people are in need of hope.
Jenny Kane covers arts and culture in Northern Nevada, as well as the dynamic relationship between the state and the growing Burning Man community. She also covers the state's burgeoning cannabis industry (Check out her podcast, the Potcast, on iTunes.) Support her work in Reno by subscribing to RGJ.com right here.
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December 16, 2019 at 10:02PM
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Meet Erik Burke, the artist behind a massive (and stunning) flower mural in downtown Reno - Reno Gazette Journal
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