Summit Alley

Overview

This wall is squinched between a few buildings in Scott’s Addition, an old industrial neighborhood in Richmond, VA that now has fresh crops of co-working spaces, luxury apartments, breweries, etc. This mural adds some life to an otherwise sterile alley between an excellent coffee shop (Afterglow) and an extraordinary restaurant (Brenner Pass) and my now-deceased favorite coffee shop in the city (Chairlift, RIP)

There's a mix of concepts that got me to this final design, including trust, safety, passing time, and the complex beauty of the world around us. I designed and painted this in the first couple months of the COVID-19 lockdown period, just before some of the first moments of the 2020 uprising. Even though it’s one of my more abstract designs, it’s very informed by that deeply charged period of time.

I think that the doorway is an interesting feature of the wall, so I used it as a place for people to 'find' a quote that ties into my inspiration for the design, led there by the rest of the composition. “You are BORN. You was NOT. Now you IS.” is a quote from Chicken Soup, Boots by Maira Kalman. It’s an amazing kid’s book about all the ways you can live your life, as long as you’ve got it.

Size
66’ x 20' // 1320 sqft

DOB
April 2020

Client
1800 Summit Ave // Brad Cummings

Instagram
Process Highlight Reel

Assisted by
Oli Begley

Location: 1800 Summit Ave, Richmond, VA 23220