East Lansing, MI

May 19, 2021 Greetings Tour

Greetings from East Lansing, MI. We are celebrating a 50th mural milestone on the Greetings Tour with our first mural in the state of Michigan! We can’t believe that we have been painting postcard murals for over 6 years now. What a journey it has been as we look back at how much we’ve grown and learned since we first left New York City back in 2015. Little did we know how much our lives would change and all the amazing places our mural project would bring us to.

It’s been a very busy Spring for us as we started our third mural back to back after recently finishing murals in Oxford and Litchfield. This particular project in East Lansing has been in the works with the city since 2018 originally spearheaded by East Lansing Arts Commissioner Tedda Hughes. We are excited to be here and finally make it all come to fruition.

After dodging some tornados & hail on the way up from Litchfield, Illinois, we arrived to East Lansing in some frigid temperatures. You never know what kind of crazy weather to expect these days! We spent our first day in East Lansing driving around to check out some of the famous landmarks that we would incorporate into the mural. After learning of the recent passing of Eli Broad, we decided to check out the MSU Broad Museum as our first stop. The architecture of this building itself was very unique and many people refer to it looking like a spaceship that landed on campus. Apparently, the design was very controversial at the time it was built but we think that all great art creates dialogue and it’s certainly done it’s job. It also just happened that there was an exhibition all about seeds which tied into our recent visit with Henry Eilers (a botanist from Litchfield, IL.)

The Marriott East Lansing was kind enough to accommodate us for a few nights and it was right next door to the Division St. Garage aka “Habitrail” aka “the Hamster Cage” aka “the Colorful Parking Garage.” This structure was another image that we were incorporated into the mural design. After talking to a lot of people, there seems to be a mixed reaction as some people love it and others consider it an eyesore. Like all art, it’s totally subjective but no one can deny that it’s clearly become landmark downtown and something that’s unique to the city of East Lansing. We spent some time circling this structure to get a better sense of the design in person. It was funny that the colors of the curved paneling actually matched our RV’s gradient design.

The next morning, we arrived at our wall located in the back lot of Harrison Roadhouse. Many people who stopped by questioned why we picked this location. However, the location was actually sourced by the city after vetting various property owners who would be open to help maintain the longevity of the artwork. In addition, our murals are usually placed in areas that are safe to the public for taking interactive photos so the photographer doesn’t have to be in the middle of the street to capture the artwork. Because there are some parking spots on either side of the wall, we decided to keep the lettering smaller and centered so it won’t ever be fully obstructed. The wall itself had a lot of obstacles such as conduits, pipes, wires and gutters. Therefore, we also positioned the artwork in a way that avoided as much of the obstructions as possible.

The first day was spent pouncing out the design on the wall and prepping the letters so that we could spray the background. We realized that we should probably have a sign or brochure that explains the traditional pouncing process. We find ourselves explaining this to a lot of people during every mural! The next day, local artist Samskee brought over an airless sprayer and helped spray the background over the textured surface. Previous to our mural, Sam actually had a graffiti piece that ran on this wall for almost 9+ years. Since Victor comes from a similar background in graffiti, we always want to make sure it’s okay to go over any existing graffiti. In this case, Samskee was cool about it and we wanted to involve him to help collaborate on this project in exchange. Together, we knocked out the entire background in a day. Thankfully, we had his extra airless sprayer as ours started to have some issues and it would not have been fun to paint over the various obstacles on this wall with brush! We also ended up putting in a hidden little tribute to his past Narwahl character into our mural as well.

On the third day, we got to our tedious process of masking out the letters to prepare for the imagery inside. The masking may seem a bit like overkill but it helps treat each letter like it’s own canvas and we don’t have to worry about overspray on the already completed background & lettering outlines. We also work this way to make the progress photos look better as people stop by to check out the progress.

Because of our tight schedule, we had some additional help from another Michigan artist Zak at Detroit Sign Painters. He showed up in his hand painted van that totally matched our RV! We had to get some photos of our vehicles together. Zak also did a lot of traveling in his van to paint signs across the country and also came from a similar graffiti culture background. He worked on the Greetings From text, the Broad in the “ST” and the Mary P Sharp red sculpture image in the “SI.” This was actually the first time we mixed spray paint with brush for the imagery details. Victor painted some of the distant skies and trees with spray paint and Zak came in to layer the foreground elements using brush. To make it all look cohesive, we went back and layered on some small details w/ spray paint. This process seems to open up a lot more collaboration opportunities with local artists that don’t use spray paint. We plan on experimenting with it more in the future.

We were in town just after graduation so apparently we didn’t get the full experience of the MSU college culture. However, it gave us some quieter time to paint without too many distractions. The finished mural will be a welcome surprise when the students come back for classes. One of our favorite images we painted was Sparty the mascot at a football game in the NG. We even incorporated ourselves into the sidelines as a little easter egg signature. The cotton candy cloud sunset was something we had to add into the sky after witnessing it multiple times during very late sunsets around 9pm. A lot of people don’t realize that the majority of Michigan is actually in Eastern time zone.

In the LAN letters, we paid tribute to East Lansing's ancestral history transporting viewers back to the Anishinaabe land and the Three Fires Confederacy — an alliance of the Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi people. John Ostrander, vice president of the Nokomis Cultural Heritage Center, helped us put together an accurate representation of the Anishinaabe. “It’s to show (observers) that there were people here on this land," he said. "They were here on this land before Europeans and the university was here." The mural also portrays two Anishinaabe people sitting with a barrel of manoomin — a wild rice native to Michigan that was decimated by European settlers, Ostrander said. (Lansing State Journal)

On top of the “A” we added a black squirrel which was one of Victor’s favorite things to paint into the mural. These black squirrels are native to Michigan and can be found all over the MSU campus. “Local lore says the eccentric Dr. John Harvey Kellogg or his cereal magnate brother, Will Keith Kellogg, introduced them to southern Michigan.” which seems to be partly true according to this article in the Battle Creek Enquirer. However, we did hear from some locals that the squirrels are notorious for causing local power outages when they touch the transformers and power lines at the same time.

One of the most common questions we were are asked is how we come up with the different imagery that we paint into the letters. Usually, we refer to the locals to suggest what we include since they know best. However, we do direct them with the top level categories to try to narrow the ideas. These include touching on an element of culture, history, nature and landmarks. From there, we try to select which of the images are most unique to the place we are painting. In the case of East Lansing, their public art committee helped with the image selections in addition to making sure some of the elements hit the grant requirements.

As we were finishing the mural, we had a very nice couple come visit us and bring us some snack gifts. They have been following our murals all over the country and finally happened to be working in a city close to where we were painting. Randomly, they also were planning a trip close to Fargo when we will be there next month so we would likely meet them again! We are very impressed by how many murals some of our followers travel to visit. One of our goals is to help out local businesses with the increased traffic from visitors. It was great to see this working out as it was the couple’s first time visiting East Lansing and they ended up spending a day touring the sites (mostly what we featured in our letters) and eating at local restaurants. Thank you Tadashi & Manami!

Special thanks to Heather Majano, Wendy Longpre and Tedda Hughes for all their work in getting us out to East Lansing. There’s too many people to name on the public art committee but we appreciate all their feedback and support as well. Thanks to the Harrison Roadhouse for giving us this awesome canvas and letting us take up your parking lot all week.