Pine Street Mural

Norte Maar’s second local mural was designed by Estefania Velez-Rodriguez and executed in collaboration with artists Elisabeth Condon, Paula Part and Kiana Vega.

Artist Statement - 128 Pine Street Mural Design

The design is set up as a pointed interior perspective of a bedroom which is actually an outside landscape. The left wall is a tinted blue purple using Golden Fluid acrylics mixed with Behr Exterior paint. The image for the left side of the design is taken from a source image of her cousin's backyard in Yauco Puerto Rico. She was born in Mayagues Puerto Rico, with her family originating in Ponce. She left Puerto Rico when she was 4 years old and often refers to it within her paintings. The right side of the design is structured through a yellow-green wall. This part of the mural was designed using her iPhone images of a waterfall once visited in Cuernavaca Mexico. This side of the mural landscape also utilizes images of palm trees once found inside of a cemetery in Ponce, PR. The sky in the design is not fully clear, as it is tinted from a blue green which gives the feeling of a looming storm and is painted with a bluish white gradient that gives the feeling of the accumulation of the weight of a rain shower. She adds a gradient disturbance to move the eye from the palm fronds past the waterfall and over to the liminal space where the two walls meet to form the deepest part of the design, which is also where the two door entrances are placed within the 128 pine buildings structure. The lush backyard landscape which is abstracted on the left side of the design uses high key colors which are simplified in shape and form and move the eye towards the center access of pointed perspective by shifting the size of the plants. Bright, exciting, curvilinear shapes make the mural approachable.

—Estefania Velez-Rodriguez