Me & My Mural.
The Scratch Meats Mural
I spent every moment of one week in June, 2019 painting a GIGANTIC mural for Scratch Meats. You can see it in person in Portland, Oregon at 2929 N Russet St. (one block North of Lombard on Peninsular).
Scratch Meats make absurdly delicious sausage by hand here in Portland, OR. They sell their meat at farmers markets all over town and this mural is now painted on their production kitchen. Jeff and Sabrina are old friends of mine, we lived together almost ten years ago. I’ve been doing their signage and branding since they started. If you want to eat better quality meat, this is the best, and the most delicious.
I wanted to make an image that showed a wide variety of people, looking a little bit like a gathering of shoppers at farmer’s market. I added 6 sausages in the image, three of those are packages of sausage. My intention was to make an image that felt celebratory and inclusive. I love Sabrina and Jeff and Scratch Meats and I wanted to celebrate them and do their product and their place proud.
This mural is 17 feet high, I’m 5’2” so that’s 3 and half of me. I rented scaffolding, dealt with my fear of heights and enjoyed the freedom of working non-stop because my kid was out of town. I projected the image, traced it in chalk and painted all day everyday. A tornado touched down in North Portland at the end of my first day painting and washed all my chalk lines away. I had to redraw them but I got a glimpse of what the painting looked like without the lines. I wasn’t sure that I could pull this off and I feel grateful for the help and positive encouragement of anybody who stopped by or put a paintbrush to the wall.
