DIY: Cover Graffiti Quickly

Yesterday I decided to cover some of the graffiti that had been collecting at the site. In three hours I was able to cover up a large portion of the graffiti. First I used a roller to cover the bricks with yellow paint. I left some of the previous graffiti in the cracks of the brick, since they provide some great character. The design is then made with spray paint. You could make the same thing with regular paint but it would take longer.

I wanted to put some items on the wall to fill the space so it wouldn't just get covered with graffiti again. It seems like when we've tried to put graffiti style lettering on the wall that it just gets painted over, so this time I tried putting up some whimsical drawings of the produce that we are currently planting and information about when we are open. This will not only cover the graffiti, but serve as a billboard to the neighborhood about when our community work days are.

The design I used is really simple and I imagine that it could be copied by others with very little artistic ability. The strawberries are just a red cone, with a green star on top. Then the green and the red are outlined by black and black dots are put on the red.

The potatoes are simply brown ovals outlined in black with green vines drawn on last.

The flowers are made by drawing a purple four leaf clover shape. puting a blue X in the middle of the flower. Then using light yellow to draw a small circle in the middle of the flower and to outline the outside of the flower. Then the outside of the flower is neatly outlined with black.

And poof, a fast mural that cheaply covers large spaces of graffiti.

Mural Work Continues at the St. Paulus Lot

For the last few months, Leanne C. Miller has been working on a mural at the St. Paulus lot (Gough and Eddy). The mural is almost finished. Final additions that will be added to the mural are wooden pieces that will extend above the walls with growing plants and vegetables.

Once the mural is completed we will be celebrating the mural with a gathering at the St. Paulus lot and have public reception. We'll let you know when we have a date scheduled for this event. Since it is currently the rainy season in San Francisco, completion of the mural depends upon how often the weather is nice enough to be outside painting.

Below you can see the original designs and the current look of each panel. You can click on any of the images to see them in a larger size.

Jan 2: Garden Work Day

We planted some succulents we got for free from the St. Francis Lutheran parsonage, where there was a succulent bush that needed some pruning. It's as easy as breaking off a branch and put it in the dirt. We'll be using the succulents for our vertical gardening (since they're very self sustaining and need little watering).

Click here to see the designs for two types of vertical gardens we started building today: wall mounted frames AND fence pockets

In other exciting news, we were given a composting worm bin today!

We also posted some signs announcing our work days, which take place every Saturday from 10am - 2pm (except for when it rains)!
Location: St. Paulus Lutheran Lot at Eddy and Gough, San Francisco, CA.

Our first mural work day at St. Paulus garden site a success!

Embarking on the Mural Project: Day 1

Today we officially began working on our mural at our St. Paulus garden site with our muralist Leanne C. Miller. After posting an ad on Craig's List last week seeking free paint and receiving an overwhelming amount of responses, Megan and I drove all across the city and as far as the East Bay to pick up gallons and gallons of paint in preparation for today. Earlier this week Case and I cleaned and primed the walls, working late in the night to make sure we would be ready for our first work day.

So far we've been able to get nearly all of our materials free of cost, keeping with our philosophy of urban share. Thanks to all the wonderful people of Craig's List and the community for donating their paint and supplies!

This morning we began by outlining and painting the first two panels. The first panel depicts a cross section of earth and the layers which make it up. Leanne designed this panel so it can also act as an educational tool for children who will visit the garden (beginning this Saturday for our first work day); a wonderful resource we will surely use often! In the second panel, a volunteer is serving a warm bowl of soup to a guest of WELCOME.

The next panels to come will depict images of the original St. Paulus church steeple and stained glass window, our soon to be built mobile cart which will distribute free produce and engage with the community through various arts programming, plus images of fruits, vegetables, herbs, friendly garden bugs and even praying (literally!) mantises.

Leanne C. Miller, Muralist & Artist

Leanne painting the cross section on Panel 1

Leanne outlining Panel 2

Tamara follows Leanne filling in Panel 2

Leanne (left) and Tamara (right) hard at work
Location: St. Paulus Lutheran Lot at Eddy and Gough, San Francisco, CA.

Our next mural work day will be this Sunday, November 22nd - so if you're in the area or just curious, stop by and say hello, we'd love to have you!

Check back soon for more photographs of our progress!

If you'd like get involved with Urban Share please contact Pete at pete@welcomeministry.org

Introducing Leanne C. Miller, Artist and Muralist

Leanne C. Miller, artist and muralist, is the latest addition to our team. Leanne recently completed a wonderful mural on Market and 6th Streets near Pearl Art, supported by the San Francisco Arts Commission, with fellow muralist Helen Bayly. She will be designing and painting a beautiful mural for us at the St. Paulus Garden.

Leanne was born in Phoenix Arizona where she had the opportunity to attend a small public high school focused on the Arts in Scottsdale called New School for the Arts. From this highschool experience she went on to attend San Francisco Art Institute, the premier Fine art college on the west coast, founded in 1871. During this time she volunteered and interned at such independant Art Organizations, as Southern Exposure Gallery and Ar+space.Leanne also taught through the "Mission Voices" program at southern exposure, and was an artist assistant developing curriculum for the summer arts program there. She also co-taught art at the Arts Far west highschool in Oakland California, and also through "Root Division" based in the mission area of San Francisco. Leanne graduated in 2005 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting. Since then she has been making and showing her work around San Francisco and New York. Recently she completed a mural for the San Francisco Arts Commission and will be in the winter and spring issues of Studio Visit Magazine.

The mural Leanne is working on for our garden will include images of the St. Paulus church steeple, its original mandala stained glass window and lots of yummy produce, animals, and helping garden bugs. We're all so excited to see this go up soon!

Below: Images of the Market Street mural recently completed by Leanne C. Miller and Helen Bayly for the San Francisco Arts Commission.

To learn more about Leanne please visi:

www.fanciemammal.com

www.fanciemammal.blogspot.com
www.sanpanchoartcollective.com

If you're interested in getting involved, volunteering or donating to support this mural please contact:

Tamara Loewenstein, Curator and Community Arts Organizer

tamara@tamaraloewenstein.com

Work Day 3: St. Paulus Lot

Today we continued our painting-
Tilled the first level - This is not only a good way to prepare the ground for planting, but because this lot has been empty for sometime it helped us to find glass, needles and other sharp things that we want to make sure get picked up before we allow other volunteers to come into the space.

If you plan on attempting to do this in an empty lot near you, please remember the following safety tips:

1. Wear long pants and protective eye wear to protect yourself from things that might get kicked up at you.
2. Never, never, never put anything near the blades while it is turned on. If the blades get jammed, make sure it is turned off, a safety is on and that you use something other than your fingers to get it out.
3. Try to pick up as much trash, glass and rocks as you can before you start.
   

After tilling the ground, it was soft and easier to flatten, which allowed us to began to lay out where our first beds will go-

Location: St. Paulus Lutheran Lot at Eddy and Gough, San Francisco, CA.

St. Paulus Garden: Work Day #2 - More Painting

More graffiti transformed. On the left you can see how it looked before, and on the right is after. I primarily used the paint that was already on the wall - to save money and resources.

A few of the other pieces are still in progress.

St. Paulus Garden: Work Day #1 - Painting

This is what the lot looked like before our work day.

The day began with a trip to the San Francisco Dump & Recycling Center where we picked up a carload of items for our garden, included 8 cans of paint. Because paint is considered hazardous waste, it has to be disposed of properly. The Dump mixes the paints together and gives them away for free to anyone who wants. You can get white, green or gray.

First we used rollers to cover up rusty poles and graffiti.


Some of the graffiti we liked, so we kept it and painted around it so it would blend in with the rest of our work. Then, I used spray paint to create art that looked similar to it, so it would look uniform. We didn't have any white spray paint so I made a figure out of a name someone had put on the wall.

Here someone had painted ACT. Since we were creating an outdoor sanctuary it made sense to to make it into SANCTUARY. In the picture above, you can see that we are painting over other graffiti.
As the sun lowered, we took a final picture of our work for the day. Three people were able to paint half the space in 5 hours. In the process, we had at least 15 members of the community who were excited about our project and offered to help.