Mural opening

BRIDGE Housing's new affordable housing building Mural had it's grand opening March 21st. The reclaimed wood mural I made for the lobby was the backdrop for the celebrations, and it was a pleasure to meet so many of the people who worked on the building, and some of the new residents. Big thanks to all at BRIDGE, Jeff Breidenbach at Argus, Lee Tollefsrud for installation help, and John Yoyogi Fortes (Digital Boondocks) for shooting this video.

A 20 x 20 ft mural using reclaimed wood for the lobby of a new housing building, also named Mural, at McArthur Station, Oakland. Some of the wood comes from Oakland homes, you can see street names in among the foliage etc.

From an interview on The Studio Work, "Robert Stevenson at Bridge Housing talked a lot about their mission being about rebuilding and “re-knitting” a neighborhood that had been fractured by catastrophic development decisions, and by successive waves of social change. Also Jeff gave me a lot of historical background regarding the origins of the area and the transitions it has gone through. I spent time walking around, exploring further for myself, and photographing sights that I felt indicative of all these thoughts. I latched onto the images of all the mature trees that line the residential streets around Mosswood Park, and thought about how they’d witnessed and endured all the changes we’d been talking about. I saw them as being emblematic of both resilience and new growth, and so trees and foliage became the main image of the piece. I like the idea of creating this wild forest-garden feel in among the clean architectural lines of the urban apartment building".  Read the full interview here.

More images here.