Community Mural Brings Wonder and Joy to the Sachse Area
A vibrant new mural has been completed at the Chase Oaks Woodbridge Campus. Learn more about the creation of the mural and the intentions for it in the words of the artists Lindsay Zodrow, Carlos Barboza, and Dusty Gilpin, below.
Lindsay: It was fun to get to be here and experience this place. And I think the thing that is fascinating to me is how it kind of feels like a small town downtown, where it's like a hub for a lot of different communities.
Carlos: [We wanted to honor]…the history of this site, how it used to be a train station, and we have the caboose as well, just within view. We wanted to do something that paid tribute also to the past, and in the same way shows forward motion and progress.
Dusty: There's always challenges. There's always obstacles whenever we approach a wall. You have electric lines.
Just the sheer scale of this wall is intimidating when you walk up to it. From the road, it doesn't look like much. You're like, “Oh, it's like a warehouse.” But when you get up next to this wall, you realize that it's a hundred feet long. It's 45 feet tall. You know, it's four stories at the peak. So it's big, it's a huge wall. It's that, plus weather, you know, it's rainy today, or it's hot. So we just kind of have to navigate stuff. We're working from basically 7 to 11 PM at night—full days. So just trying to get it done.
Lindsay: This wall is definitely our biggest. And I think we all underestimated how big it was. So we got here day one, and we're like, “Oh gosh!” And so there's little things like the lift: the higher you get, the more it sways. So if you are afraid of heights, that can be unnerving.
Dusty: My hope with almost all the murals that we install is that we're placemaking. We're taking something that wasn't and we're turning it into a something. We're making a landmark. We're turning this alley here into a beautiful space, right? It's wonderful that it sits right next to this little park.
From the street, from a mile away, we've already had people come and go, “Oh, you can see it all the way from, you know, the corner over there.” I mean, when you put this much color on a wall this size, it's going to have an impact, right? And this is just a positive impact for the city.
Lindsay: I think my hope is always just that people would drive by and just have a bit of wonder, that they might come closer and drive into the parking lot and just see what the mural is, especially since some of it is behind trees. There's more to explore. And so I think I'm hoping that people will interact more with this mural, especially since there's the picnic tables and stuff close by. I think I always just hope that people will drive by and be like, “Oh, cool!” Like just maybe add a little light to their day.
Look here for more information about the Chase Oaks community mural projects.