It’s been my dream for a long time now to paint a mural. I finally get to create a piece of public art and now you can be a part of making this dream become reality.
In the past year I have been working on an increasingly larger scale, creating life sized figurative paintings of older women from my native Ukraine. And now I get to bring my beloved babushkas out to a public space.
This mural is a part of the Ladies Up initiative by the Portland Street Art Alliance, a small local non-profit organization. PSAA has extended an opportunity to five local female-identifying artists to create murals in SE Portland's Buckman Neighborhood at SE Morrison and 14th Ave. I got one of the larger walls in the project, a whopping 10x18 footer. I can’t wait to paint my babushkas so they can sternly stare at the Portland passerby from this expanse!
Before and after
I have created a painting that will serve as a scale model for the mural and here is my best effort at digital wizardry to show you what it’s going to look like on the wall. 🙃
Raising funds to make it happen in real life
The original painting that I created as a mock up for this mural is also offered for sale. Own a piece of soon to be Portland history! The mural will be on that wall for 3 years, but you can keep the original scale model design forever.
For this campaign I am asking to raise $2500. This covers:
fair wages for hiring a fellow artist to assist with logistics, transportation and on site assistance during the painting of the mural
the cost of fulfilling all the amazing rewards you crowd-funders will get to enjoy by contributing to our campaign
creative time for designing and painting the mural
The Portland Street Art Alliance is providing participating artists with a materials stipend of $750 which helps to cover paint, supplies and other material expenses. However, at this scope of project, I will need help. I will be hiring an assistant with a vehicle to transport paints, ladders, and other sundry to and from the location, as well as help me with wall preparation, roughing in the design, and generally keeping me sane and well-hydrated.
The project is going to take a week from start to completion and I want to pay my assistant a fair wage. And as I am volunteering many more hours for preparation and design, as well as physical execution of the mural, I would greatly appreciate any and all contributions to compensate for my creative time and effort for producing this piece of public art in the midst of the pandemic.
To reach my fundraising campaign goal of $2500 I am running a limited time sale on my available paintings that served as inspiration for this mural. They are all images of strong, resilient and much underappreciated older women. I don’t consider them portraits of particular individuals; they are collective images, archetypes, embodiments of the indomitable spirit of all of our mothers and grandmothers who withstood adversity and weathered many storms with dignity and without much praise or acknowledgement.
Vast majority of the images of women we see tend to be the same and similar: young, slender, conforming to particular commercial ideas and ideals about beauty and femininity. I want to show women that are strong and resilient, who stand tall and whose primary concerns aren’t a smooth perfection of their looks. We need more diverse representation of women in our visual sphere. Age isn’t something to hide and apologize for. These babushkas will remind the passerby of that!