A few months ago, I received a message from a client saying that they were opening a new retail location in Alabama, that they wanted a floral mural, and that the deadline was ASAP.  It’s probably no surprise that my reply was “Can I start on Saturday?”  I was in the middle of another flower mural in NY, had never been to Alabama, needed to have a scissor lift delivered to the site and hire an assistant due to the size of the mural, but I was (overly) confident I’d be able to get all the moving pieces sorted out in a few days.  What’s a multi-story mural without a little excitement and a fast timeline?

Day One: Non-Stop Disaster

I travel all the time to places I don’t know!  I know how to do this!  I quickly chose and booked my Airbnb for a cute little room conveniently close to the airport, with perfectly fine reviews. 

Well, it didn’t all quite turn out like I had in mind.  My flight out of New York was cancelled just as I arrived to the airport to check-in.  I was able to book another flight which had me re-routed through Houston, Texas (a little out of the way considering I was going New York to Birmingham).  I suffered through all the transits and transfers, and called an Uber at the airport, congratulating myself on picking a place so close by after such a long trip.

The Uber driver stared at my huge orange faux fur coat and paint-splattered suitcase and double checked the address.  “Are you sure this is the address?” he asked me.  “Yes!” I said.  There appeared to be no street lights where we driving and a creepy feeling came over me.  “The GPS is leading me into this alley,” the driver said.  Suddenly, out of nowhere, a man with a crazed look began pounding on the passenger door of the Uber.  “Let me in,” he screamed. 

The Uber driver turned to me, and said, “This is the address where you are going.”  I stared out of the car, to the absolutely pitch black street, and saw the door I would need to open with this screaming man directly in my path.  There was not a single person on the street.  I paused.  I pride myself on getting though crazy situations in places all over the world, as I always solo travel for murals, but I was just so tired.  The Uber driver said “I’m taking you to a hotel.  I have 3 daughters and I won’t let you get out of this car.  If you don’t have money, I’ll pay for it.  This area is the worst area of Birmingham, and when I saw your coat and suitcase, I thought you were coming here to sell drugs.”  What a kind man he was—in NYC, the driver most likely would have dumped me on the street and roared away. 

Well, I got to a hotel at last, paying 3 times what I had budgeted for the night, and opened my suitcase to get ready for bed.  Not one, but two cans of my paint had somehow opened during all my flights.  Orange paint was everywhere.  I mean everywhere.  And of course, I had opened the suitcase on the hotel’s wall-to-wall carpeting, and now orange paint was on the carpeting. 

This story ends with me spending the next two hours frantically washing orange paint off of the hotel carpet, the hotel towels, and every item of clothing and toiletries in my suitcase.  To this day, I still am carrying around toiletries covered in a thin layer of orange paint.  Par for the course for a mural artist. 

Day Two: All About that Mural Machinery

I barely managed to sleep, I was so wired from all the travel and mishaps, and early the next morning I headed to Home Depot to buy a scaffolding and a few cans of paint to replace the paint that had spilled. I always use a scaffolding now when I paint murals, because it allows me to sit and face the wall directly while painting. 

I have suffered a chronic back injury from standing in a twisted position on a ladder almost every day for 5 years painting murals in my early career, and I highly recommend to any mural artists—use a scaffolding!  Unfortunately, most of my clients only provide a ladder, so it’s on me to get my own scaffolding to the mural site, and they are really, really heavy!! 

I didn’t have a plan of how I would transport this scaffolding back to the mural location, but I figured God helps those who help themselves J  Long story short, I had the help of another lovely, lovely Uber driver, and somehow the two of us pushed and rolled the box out of his giant SUV onto the sidewalk in front of the mural location without damaging either of our backs.  Then I literally opened the box on the sidewalk and began dragging each piece into the store.  The retail staff offered to help me carry the metal pieces inside, and together all three of us managed to assemble the scaffolding.  Needless to say, this was the beginning of a fast friendship between me and the store staff. 

Now all I needed was my scissorlift to be delivered, which I needed to reach the heights of the exterior mural for the store.  The delivery man was three hours later, which put him outside of the window of time allowed by the retail mall for equipment deliveries.  When at last, the delivery man pulled up outside of the store with the scissorlift, immediately a mall security car with whirring sirens pulled up and forbid him from unloading the machine.  I immediately ran out and begged and mentioned some names and rambled on about “flower murals” and somehow the security guard let the delivery happen.  Wow, those security people are there in seconds!  Better than any police force I know of!

Success!  I had my scissorlift and my scaffolding, and my suitcase and paint clothes covered fully in orange paint.  What else does a mural artist need?  Well, the scissorlift was in place outside the store to begin painting my first flowers, and…..it wouldn’t go up.   It managed to go up a few inches, just enough to let me know it wasn’t broken, and then started wildly beeping.  What could possibly be the problem? I moved it away from the mural wall, and it went up!  I moved it back to where I needed it to be to paint the mural, and it refused to go up.  Suddenly I remembered that scissorlifts are sometimes super finicky about the ground being level. 

The sidewalk looked incredibly flat and even, but it was the only hypothesis I had to go on.  I ran to the back trash area of the store, and found some cardboard boxes.  By that time, my amazing assistant had arrived, and she drove the scissorlift forward and then reversed over the wedged cardboard, so that it was lodged under the wheels on the left side of the machine.  At last, the machine went up!  We got the machine to agree, but the weather decided it did not.  Rain began soon after, and we had to shift to mural painting inside.

Flowers, flora, florista

For the next 10 days, 8 hours a day, my assistant and I methodically, diligently, heroically painted flowers and more flowers on every interior and exterior wall and crevice of this retail location.  The space was huge!  It was a rough beginning to the project, but the mural is one of my favorites and we got into a flow of flower painting that was almost hypnotic.  We painted flowers in every color and size and style we could imagine. The store staff was wonderful and entertaining and the customers were so excited and enthusiastic to see our progress that it gave us energy.  Once I finished the mural, I flew directly from Birmingham to Mexico without even going back to New York, and decided to take a much needed vacation by the beach.  Until the next floral mural!