520 Mural Spotlight: Life Size Art
For this month’s mural spotlight, we’re featuring the amazing grizzly bear painting. Matt Halm, the creator behind the mural, gave us the story on how this bear came to life.
This bear was painted with the help of students from The Baum School of Art and Central Elementary School as part of City Center’s Building Community initiative. The bear was painted on "parachute cloth,” a method of painting on flexible cloth panels that are then permanently installed to a mural space. Halm chose a bear as a subject because he wanted to play with the scale of the space in relationship to the viewer and the painters. Halm also liked the idea of young students creating something much larger than them on a realistic scale. The painting is about the size of a real grizzly bear standing. Halm knew it would be stunning in photographs, too. There is also a thematic connection between the totemistic designs on this level of the mural since bears were often used in totems. Also, there is a conceptual link with the mural level above, which depicts Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt.
Have a section of the mural you'd like to see featured? Take a photo and tag @520lofts on Instagram and use #LiveCreatively520.