Muraling Austin

[upbeat music] - What I do is I create murals, I create public art, and I love it.

It is really my dream job.

I get to wake up every day, I do what I love, I'm really passionate about it.

I feel like I'm making a difference in the world putting out positive artwork and bright colors.

[Narrator] Big walls, bright colors and bold designs are transforming spaces both public and private throughout the capitol of Texas.

Known for its young and artsy vibe, Austin is bursting with vibrant murals that are energizing its urban architecture.

Check out the contemporary murals of Austin and the artists bringing these walls to life... here on "Muraling Austin."

[upbeat music] - My work is really bright, really colorful, very vibrant.

I love color.

My background is in graffiti, so there's a bit of that kind of like street style in a lot of my work.

I just love being creative.

So there's not necessarily one specific style that I stick to but I always want it to be very colorful and very positive.

[Narrator] Named Austin's best muralist by the Austin Chronicle two years in a row, mixed media artist and muralist, Zuzu Perkal, has been creating mural art in Austin for over a decade.

A graduate of the University of Texas, Zuzu studied creative advertising but her instincts took her in a different direction.

- My journey as an artist has been really wild and really wandering.

I loved going to UT, I loved the creative sequence, but I realized when I was in those classes that I was creating artwork for a client and so it wasn't quite as creatively open as I had liked it to be.

And when I graduated, I didn't really know what I wanted to do.

I had been creating art on the side just for fun, doing a lot of street art and graffiti.

And so I went and I traveled for a few months and just kind of let loose and when I came back to Austin, I just decided I just wanted to keep making art.

At the beginning, I was pretty much paying people to paint their walls.

So I would pay for materials and go and paint someone's garage or in someone's bedroom and I just kept following my dream.

I put in the work and I put in the time and eventually people would hire me to do murals.

[upbeat music] [Narrator] The majority of Zuzu's work is in the commercial sector.

While each mural is unique to its space, positivity is always an underlying theme.

- My main goal when I create a piece of art is for it to be authentic to me and to be able to express myself but also to have an impact socially, whether that's creating a conversation on the streets or enlivening a space with beautiful artwork.

I think I have the opportunity as an artist to really invite somebody into not only my world, but also to step out of their comfort zone or out of their day-to-day grind and really just take a moment to be present with themselves and appreciate artwork and feel a bit of positivity and to be uplifted by the artwork.

[upbeat music] [Narrator] The rooftop pool deck at the W Austin Hotel was an opportunity to do just that, create a vibrant space by muraling the unadorned concrete walls.

- It was a really cool opportunity to take something plain and boring and really spice it up and make it fun.

So when people come up here, you're almost transported to another place.

Hanging out in the tropics and just up here to have a good time and love your life.

I love the color pink.

I use it in all of my work.

When I grew up, I was a tomboy and I didn't like pink.

I didn't want to be associated with being really girly and really feminine.

And when I got a little bit older, I started to explore more into art and more into color and there was something about pink that really made me feel good about being a female.

There's pinks and purples and teals.

And so when I create a mural, I wanna use those colors because I want people to know that I'm a woman doing something that not that many women do.

[Narrator] Supporting Austin's creative community is a priority for Zuzu.

She is involved in several organizations that provide unique opportunities.

Over 40 local artists were recruited to take over a soon-to-be demolished 1960s duplex as part of the annual East Austin Studio Tour.

- I had the pleasure of painting the front of the building for "Here Today, Gone Tomorrow."

That was really exciting to create the front facade of the building where people first see this.

So we wanted it to be really inviting.

The doors and the windows were actually really new for me and really fun.

It's a different style I hadn't done before which was one of the greatest parts of this project, just stepping out of your normal creative boundaries and trying something new.

I also got to do a room inside, which allowed me to get out of my comfort zone of just painting murals and canvases.

So let's go check that out.

[groovy music] Welcome to "Disco Paradise."

We had this concept of having all black and white patterns on the walls and then creating this really colorful environment with normal objects that you'd see or experience in a living room.

And just wanted to create this weird, funky vibe.

[gentle music] [Narrator] Another collaborative community project was helmed by Zuzu and honored the legacy of two activists with an uplifting message.

- My portion of that mural says, "Your potential is limitless."

I want people to walk by and drive by that and really feel inspired that they can do anything that they want and that their potential really is limitless.

And to pay homage to all the people that have come before us and the people who are doing important work in the city and around the world today.

I've got the wonderful opportunity to paint with two other artists in the city who I really admire, Sad and Niz, and they are both just incredible females doing wonderful work in the city and amazing muralists.

I think collaboration is always better.

I think it's more fun, I think it's more powerful and so I invited them to come paint the wall.

I'm really excited that we got such a prominent wall for such a powerful message and I'm very proud of it.

[gentle music] The art and public spaces is so important.

I think that it is as important as the music scene in Austin, as having great restaurants, as education, as our parks.

Like, it all kind of flows together into the culture of a city or a space.

Art is what wakes a space up.

[upbeat music] I wake up every day and I thank my lucky stars that I get to paint walls for a living.

I love every step of the process.

I love creating the design, I love collaborating with other brands, other artists and other people, I love actually painting it, I love seeing it after it's painted.

There's something very magical about that and it's just very uplifting for my soul.

[dramatic music] [upbeat music] [Narrator] Austin muralist, Soledad Fernandez-Whitechurch is a self-taught artist who uses line, color and form to create murals.

Her work often explores the past, present, and the possibilities of the future.

- The way that I would describe my art is a mix of abstract and representational work and what I'm trying to represent is identity, memory and possibility and optimism and translating that into something that is not only meaningful, but also fun and pretty to look at.

Large art has always been something that I've responded very viscerally too.

The experience of looking at a piece of art in a way that the artwork goes as far as the eye can see is 100% immersive where all of your senses are involved.

To me, that is the best experience that you can have.

[upbeat music] [Narrator] One of Soledad's largest Austin murals covers the walls of the Bolden Commons Garage.

The mural gives a nod to the history of that piece of land and its natural topography.

- Bolden Commons used to be what was known as the enchanted forest.

[lively music] Which was this heavily wooded area.

People had parties, there were concerts.

So it's a place that has a lot of significance.

But going back hundreds of years, that site used to be a sacred ground for Native Americans when they inhabited this area.

And when I was asked to do that mural, I wanted to honor that strength and that resilience in that land.

[upbeat music] So right away, I looked at old maps.

I found out where the waterways ran under the buildings and under the rocks and under the trees and created something that attempts to be both abstract but very familiar because all of the shapes and all of the references and all of the colors are inspired by what's already there.

[upbeat music] The name "Virtual Hike" came from the idea that we're marrying nature and technology, but also because I had to read so much and look at so many photos, it was almost like going on a hike.

I purposely created something that would look organic, that could look like a map, that it could look like a part of a body, that it could look like a river or a tree, because to me, life on earth is really one whole.

So if people can leave this place with a newfound reverence for nature, then I feel I've done my job.

[lively music] [Narrator] Soledad grew up in Paraguay, Argentina, and eventually, the United States.

Her mother is an artist and Soledad was often surrounded by a creative community.

Art became a way of expressing herself without language, reflecting on her Latin identity and preserving memories.

- Having been an immigrant most of my life where the language spoken is not my first language or it's not the culture where I grew up, I have always had to adapt.

But what art can bring out in people, you don't need to speak the same language.

You don't even need to live in the same part of the world to look at an image that may elicit joy in you and understand what joy feels like.

So that became my language.

I am a self-taught artist.

As an immigrant, going to art school was not even in the realm of possibilities.

What I did was I educated myself as much as I could.

Of course, I come from a background of painters, so I had some knowledge to fall back on and what knowledge I didn't have, I bought books, I experimented with materials, I exchanged free labor for experience.

And over time, I started working on larger and larger pieces of a certain size that could very well be a wall.

And from there, I began working on larger and larger properties.

[upbeat music] [Narrator] One of the large murals that Soledad created in Austin covers the exterior of an office building north of the city entitled "Rosario Strait."

The mural reflects the landscapes of Texas and California.

- Rosario is a town in Baja, California, but it's also the city in Argentina where my mother was born.

The word straight refers to geometry but there is no straight line almost in this mural because as life often proves, there really aren't any straight lines in life.

This mural in many ways references geography and geology but a lot of the negative spaces that you see referred to the desert.

Both Texas and California are states that are on the opposite sides of the same desert.

And that was an incredible message of connectivity and life beyond what the eye can see.

[energetic music] [Narrator] Soledad's murals enliven several of Austin's newer commercial buildings, a trend that has been facilitated by the Downtown Austin Alliance Foundation.

- They have been incredible in their support, making sure that there's always a relationship between new buildings, public works, and the artist.

So with the foundation, we created several murals downtown.

A movable mural for the Ann Richards anniversary that is going to be taken to several sites around Texas.

[Narrator] Soledad has also created murals for communities on her own.

An East Austin mural honors one of her personal heroes.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one of the first American women I learned about in school.

Not only was she a leader professionally, but she was a completely kind, intelligent, humble human being that, despite a millions setbacks in her life, achieved her goals to improve life for every American.

After she passed away, was a way for me to say thank you for that inspiration and also a little gift to our city.

[energetic music] [Narrator] Austin based artist, Daas, has created murals across the globe.

Using bold colors and geometric patterns, his images often incorporate nature, animals and children.

Daas' murals are inspired by the local culture and environment.

- My approach to public art is really about how it connects to the community.

This is something that's gonna live in the community, that people are gonna see and experience all the time.

So I think there's a responsibility as a public artist to do something that reflects that community and is beautiful and uplifting and positive in nature and message.

So the first thing I do is I look that city up and try to dig into the geography, what kind of wildlife is in that area?

What kind of plants and flowers are there?

What is the makeup of the people there?

What are some of the things that the area's famous for?

I have to take in consideration all of those things.

[upbeat music] [Narrator] Standing 60 feet tall amidst a towering office complex in downtown Austin, Daas' mural, "Where the Wildflowers Grow" honors the spirit of Texas through images of its native wildflowers.

- Texas has great wildflowers.

Right now, that's what's inspiring my work.

Those colors, that beauty, nature, being outside.

It's a fun piece because it's something that I could kind of design to represent people as wildflowers, how resilient we are, how strong we are, and how we kind of like plant ourselves in maybe rugged areas, but we still thrive.

And to me, that was kind of like Austin.

Austin was kind of like this rough gem that just continues to thrive, continues to be resilient.

[Narrator] While it took Daas only two weeks to paint the mural, the process is one he has developed over many years of trial and error of turning a small sketch into a large mural.

- I'll do a rendering on my computer, I'll break that down into separate colors, I'll use that to refer to when I'm painting.

But one way for me to find myself in these big large works of art, is I use this reference which numbers and these numbers coincide to a color that I've mixed and I keep this attached to my harness.

[lively music] - "Where the Wildflowers Grow" I think embodies joy, hope, and resilience.

It just highlights the beauty through downtown.

- It's a great hidden little gem downtown.

So I hope that it's a surprise for people that are just randomly walking around.

They take a look up and they see this huge mural of Texas wildflowers.

You know, I just really hope that people look at it and they find some joy when they see it.

[upbeat music] [dramatic music] [Narrator] Daas grew up mostly in Florida, riding motorcycles and skateboarding.

His time spent outdoors heavily influenced his artistic instincts, which were encouraged by his creative family.

- Being outside by myself in nature all the time helped me to appreciate experiencing the forest, trees, flowers all that stuff.

Also, riding motorcycles, skateboarding as well is very risky.

It takes you like 20, 50 times to learn a trick, right?

So that you build up this confidence and just keep going at it until it works.

And I think in art, you have to have that emotional resilience to, like, failure.

[Narrator] Daas went on to formally study commercial art.

However, his path to creating murals was more unconventional.

- When I first got outta school for commercial art, I didn't wanna do that.

I moved to Daytona Beach.

[upbeat music] I met an artist there that was doing murals and it just turned me onto the scale.

Like how you can work in such a large scale and impact the environment.

I learned a complete foundation of how to do murals.

We were doing grid systems, we were doing projections.

So I was able to really hone in my skills as an artist in all these different styles which helped me to develop my own style and the confidence to find my style.

[Narrator] These newly learned skills and his adventurous spirit would open the door to the experience of a lifetime and take him to the opposite side of the globe.

[people speaking in foreign language] - Universal Studios Japan was looking for an artist that could do a live painting show.

I had never done that.

I'd never performed, but when opportunity knocks, you just, yeah, I'm gonna go to Japan.

So within a month, I was in Osaka, Japan.

The live painting show that I was doing, I was playing a character.

I would take the paint, I would throw it on the canvas, I would just splash it, I would jump and hit it with a brush and the whole time I'm actually painting something that the audience doesn't understand because the painting's actually upside down.

[audience cheers] So in the end, it was a reveal.

In that process, you really learn how to simplify what you're doing, how each stroke makes a huge difference.

[Narrator] Being immersed in the Japanese culture had a big impact on his artistic aesthetic.

Daas was drawn to the ancient paper folding art form, known as origami.

- My first real exposure to origami was when I moved to Japan.

So it was complete culture shock and I wanted to embrace it as much as possible.

I wanted to learn as much as I could.

The attention to detail, the accuracy, I mean they were making animals, boxes, and it was just so easy to them.

There was just a moment where it just clicked and I was like, you know what?

I wanna paint origami animals in scenes interacting with each other.

[Narrator] Daas continued to evolve his signature style throughout Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, and the Middle East.

One favorite campaign sponsored by the Nippon Paint Company brought Daas to rural China creating murals for schools.

- They would repaint the entire school and then bring an international artist to do a beautiful mural there and all these pieces, because they were in schools, I wanted the children to look up to and feel inspiration, not by words, but just by imagery.

Imagery that they could relate to.

Colors that could make them happy.

And that's like, you know the experience the child's having is, wow, this whole world is opening up to me right through the book.

[Narrator] Daas had another opportunity to inspire young people in Amman, Jordan, for the 2016 Under 17 FIFA Women's World Cup.

Sponsored by the Open Art Museum and the American Embassy, artists from all over the world were invited to create street art dedicated to women's empowerment and athleticism.

- It was a pretty wild experience because I had never been to the Middle East and they asked me to do something that would inspire women and girls to take up sports.

It's not something that's encouraged in Jordan or in that area.

So I did this mural of these three girls, different ethnicities all holding a soccer ball.

I hope it inspired the young girls there.

That's the way we're gonna make change, right?

Even if it's a little bit, even if it's just a mural that inspires a four-year-old that saw that mural, wanted to play sports is now playing professional sports.

They're gonna look back and go, that was a moment that brought me here.

[Narrator] After 12 years overseas, Daas returned to the US with a focus on creating uplifting murals in public spaces.

- As I've evolved as an artist and as a muralist, I find that that messaging isn't so crucial in my mind anymore.

My focus been more about trying to recognize the things that are beautiful around us that maybe we forget to focus on every day.

[Narrator] His current murals appear on everything from airport terminals and urban garages to retaining walls and water tanks.

Recent Austin murals include "On The Range," one of many inside the new Moody Center, a sports and performing arts arena and "St.

Elmo's Flowers" at the bustling East side complex, The Yard.

- Building is like a muralist worst nightmare in a lot of ways.

[Daas laughs] So there's all kinds of textures on that.

It's corrugated metal, it's got bricks, it's got a loading dock, it's got windows, it's got stairs.

So I was thinking, well what's the best way to kind of transform this building?

So my idea was to just put a ton of flowers over this thing, like just camouflage it in flowers and make it just pop right off the street.

[Narrator] Murals popping off the surface is a concept Daas is exploring using technology, animation and augmented reality apps, viewers can experience a painted mural come to life on their screens.

- I'm able to take a painting that I've done and animate that.

I have a mural in Stanford, Connecticut, called "Stillwater Flowers" which the entire mural activates, hummingbirds come out of the flower and they're, you know, pollinating and doing all these things.

It's beautiful and I love it.

The artists can now take their vision and tell a story with that.

I just hope that the murals that I leave in these cities will play a role in the future for those communities.

That people will look back at them and still be able to appreciate them in a timeless way, that they weren't in that moment, that they still exist for people in the future and that they will enjoy them.

[dramatic music] - I have always been passionate about public art because the truth is that our experience in the places where we live and where we work is a constant conversation between our environment and our experience.

And art is something that, as a whole, transcends the human experience in terms of you don't need to understand what you're looking at, you just have to like it.

It just has to make your day better.

And being a part of something that a family or somebody walking by can look at and say, "I like that, that makes my day better, that makes my city a place where I want to live in," is probably the biggest source of pride for me as an artist.

[dramatic music] - My hope in creating art and sharing my art with the world is that it inspires people to also tap into their creativity.

I want that moment of joy and happiness when you see my artwork.

That's why I create the art that I create.

- The greatest thing about public art is that you're making art inclusive and accessible to everyone.

It's not stuck behind a wall in a gallery or in a museum.

You know, you're able to bring ideas, narratives, beauty into the public realm for everybody to enjoy.

[dramatic music] [upbeat music]