Virginia Village mural
Denver, Colorado, USA
2019
This 530-foot mural builds on the mid-century heritage of Ellis Elementary’s neighborhood, Virginia Village. The mural is meant to provide a gateway to the area and help build its identity. Christian Musselman created the mural in a 2’ x 2’ template format so that a large group of volunteers could pattern and paint the mural. The colors and intensity of the shapes used in the mural are designed to undulate as one moves along the mural.
We brought 120 talented hands to create with us.
The mural was painted by more than 60 volunteers over three lovely weekends in August. We setup simple, easy-to-follow instruction cards to guide painters in their journey, and benefited from the expert guidance of artist Nim Marasco.
Repeatable templates to cover a massive wall.
We cut custom templates (as modeled by the legendary Gato dog) that a first wave of volunteers used along a 2’x2’ template to chalk in key shapes to build the mural. Then a second wave of volunteers came through to roughly fill in the shapes with rollers of paint, and a third wave masked the edges and painted surprisingly crisp lines with hand brushes to outline the shapes.
