Jackson, MI

September 22, 2021 Greetings Tour

Greetings from Jackson, Michigan!

To date, this is our 52nd postcard mural across America and our second mural in Michigan so far.

We left our RV in storage and flew 4 hours from LA instead of driving 32 hours across the country. One large suitcase was packed full of art supplies and we shared a carry on with our clothing for 2 weeks. Even with vaccinations available for almost a year, we still felt very fortunate to be traveling again.

A few years ago, Lisa’s friend Lindsey Erb reached out to pitch Greetings Tour for her town’s new mural festival called Bright Walls. Through this, we learned of a small town in the middle of Michigan getting revived with large scale murals. Bright Walls has been transforming their downtown by bringing artists in from all over the world to breath life and culture into the city. Their volunteers host festivals and events gathering community and putting Jackson on the map as an outdoor street art gallery destination.

Earlier in May (2021) we visited Jackson on our way to paint East Lansing. We were able to meet and hang out with the founders Clay & Leslie McAndrews. After checking out the amazing murals and unique landmarks, we were able to get a feel for the town and narrow down our ideas to eventually finalize our designs. We worked closely with the Bright Walls team and locals involved to choose the content inside the letters. If you visit the mural in person, be sure to get a good look up close to catch all the details!

COVID had an effect on this project, pushing timing back for us, so we were thrilled to finally make this happen. Bright Walls usually hosts up to 15 global artists at once, but with many international travel restrictions they selected only one artist for 2021 — the Greetings Tour! We were honored to find out we were the art duo they decided to feature as the main artist.

The event is beginning to run out of walls downtown after producing 40+ murals over the years! Unlike other mural festivals, they decided to not paint over the murals each year. As a result, this leaves the artist’s work as recognizable landmarks throughout the streets of Jackson. Our original wall location didn’t work out, but we actually ended up with an even better location on the side of Jackson Coffee Co. at the corner of S Mechanic St. and W Cortland St. An employee at the coffee shop previously reached out to Bright Walls asking how to get a mural on their building. It took some convincing to the owner since there was an existing older mural as well as an awning on the wall. However, it was a very organic concept and they agreed to donate the wall and helped prep it prior to our arrival.

Thank you to Jackson Coffee Co. for reserving the conference room for us to work in throughout the week! It’s a welcoming 2 story coffee shop in a high traffic area with the most friendly baristas. It was clear from day one they treat their regular customers like family and take care locals in the neighborhood. It was lovely to hang out and get to know the staff!

Our friend Dominic Corry came through to assist us on his 6th Greetings Tour mural. Of course, we decided to give him the most intricate letter to accomplish since he’s the best at painting architecture. He tackled the County Tower in the “C” and immediately caught the crowd’s attention with the reflection details he added to the windows. Now that the mural is finished, it’s still the letter people point out the most. We also added in two Peregrine falcons (named Big Red & Clayton) that nest at the top of the tower. The plan was to originally add just one falcon until we learned that they were a life long couple so we had to add the partner.

Dominic also painted the clock tower in the “K” where we added the time 5:17 to represent the area code. Victor had a lot of fun also painting a tiny detailed Ouizi mural within the background of the letter. Consider it mural inception! This mural would not have stayed on schedule if it wasn’t for Dominic, so another big thanks goes to him for flying out to help us. It’s bittersweet but he’s going to be moving back to London soon and we’ll miss having him help out on our projects. Hopefully, we will have the chance to paint one with him in the UK one day!

Being in the Midwest, weather can change within minutes. Luckily, we had ideal painting conditions all week and they chose a wall doesn’t get any direct sun. However, we learned that wasps are very aggressive during this time of year and apparently an issue in Jackson. We laughed at first when we saw all the tools that Clay brought out to battle wasps and bees. Sure enough, Lisa got stung by a yellow jacket on her left ring finger and it ended up swelling so much she couldn’t get her ring off for 72 hours! We ended up appreciating all the wasp traps & sprays they supplied to us. As a result, we added a tiny wasp to the letter “S” as a little memory of our time.

With all of the mural festivals happening around the world, this was actually the first time that we were ever invited to paint as part of one. Although we weren’t able to meet and hang out with other mural artists, everyone was there in spirit since we were surrounded by their past work. Usually, artists are able to create spontaneous work without any creative direction at mural festivals. However, our process is a bit unique in that we proactively source the content ideas from the community. It’s what makes our project true public art instead of just painting our art in public. When we leave, we want the locals to feel a sense of ownership of the art in their everyday environment. Our hope is that the murals we create will also inspire local artists to get proactive and create their own mural art as well.

We also decided to incorporate some modern technology into this mural. Partnering with PixelStix, we embedded some NFC chips into the mural itself. The chips are then painted over and you can use your cell phones to “tap” on certain locations within the artwork. It’s the same technology used by programs like Apple Pay. In the bigger picture, we are also implementing scannable plaques with this technology across all our murals. As a result, our followers can physically check in and “collect” murals to win future merch that we are creating! Stay tuned and follow our social media to learn more about how we will be activating this new scavenger hunt technology.

As the mural was coming to completion, the festivities were just beginning. The road where we were painting got closed off, and Bright Walls set up their tent to sell shirts that were in high demand. This was also the first time we created a full color screen printed shirt with our colorful mural design. In addition, we created some linen postcards of our mural design for people to send to their friends and family during the event for free. From September 16-18, they had events like the Bright Paws Parade and dog pageant, live music, food trucks, painting competitions and a Bright Walls mural tour. They will be celebrating the finale of Bright Walls in 2022.

We got a very nice surprise from another friend, David Wang, who is assisting on our next mural in Grand Ledge, MI. He drove over from New York and got in a day early, so he jumped in and helped us out on the letter “J” in Jackson. It worked out that his sweet border collie, Lena, got to join the dog parade.

Thank you to the students, media and passerby’s who stopped by to learn about our nationwide mural project. We were surprised to meet visitors that had already been to other murals we’ve painted. We are honored to be added to the prestigious list of Bright Walls artists from all over the world and paint in Jackson!

Photo by: Bart Hawley