CARLSBAD — The wall has already been primed. The blank urban canvass that is the east facing wall of Señor Grubby’s now only waits for the rain to pass and the Los Angeles-based street artist known as bumblebeelovesyou to arrive and fill it.
Both will happen by this weekend.
The North County, especially around the coastal communities, seems to be undergoing a mural resurgence lately.
That might be because there’s a growing acceptance of street artists, according to Bryan Snyder, a street artist in his own right.
Snyder is spearheading the latest mural project in Carlsbad — something he’s calling The Carlsbad Art Wall — a project seven years in the making.
“I wanted to introduce new art into the Village,” he said. But what it’s always lacked, Snyder explained, was a highly visible location to showcase the artworks and finding the right businesses to work with.
With the amount of foot traffic that Señor Grubby’s garners and the support of the restaurant’s co-Founder Justin Jachura, Snyder’s project will embark with the first mural being painted this weekend.
The Art Wall will feature a series of Los Angeles-based street artists that Snyder has personally selected. Each month a new artist and a new mural will appear on the restaurant’s wall.
Snyder said he reached out to about two-dozen artists from the L.A. area, adding that every one of them expressed high interest, which he said, was impressive, because the artists aren’t getting paid, they’ll be providing their own paint supplies to complete the mural — and the mural will be covered over in a month’s time.
But each of the artists understands that they’ll be playing part to a larger role of introducing new works to a new city.
Jachura said he was super excited about opening up the wall of his restaurant to Los Angeles artists. “I love art, culture, and music,” he said. “I think this gives Carlsbad a platform of expression outside of our city limits, and I think it’s a good way to bring attention to the Carlsbad Village and to Carlsbad on a broader scale than just our local community. So it’s exciting for me to be a part of that.”
From sneaking around in the shadows of the early morning hours doing his own street art over the years (his character “Doodle” can be seen on several walls around the city), to having businesses invite him to create a work on their walls, Snyder’s now decade-long goal of exposing people to the love of showing art in public space and ultimately creating a more creative culture continues.
“I wanted to bring fresh art to the Village, but also bring a really high caliber to create an educational platform for the local community,” he said in regards to the artists he’s selected so far.
Aside from bumblebeelovesyou, other artists include Annie Preece and Morley.
The art murals will feature a wide range of aesthetics and messaging — everything from colorful, very graffiti-esque murals to stencil aesthetic, Snyder said. Though everything, he said, will be tasteful.
“I’m not looking to push or break any borders,” Snyder said of what imagery or messages can appear in the art designs, which he selects himself. “I understand the aesthetic that (the) Carlsbad community and the city of Carlsbad wants and accepts,” he added.
Once the first wave of L.A.-based artists is finished, Snyder will invite other local artists, no matter their skill level, to participate in the project, in the hopes that they’ve watched and learned — essentially using the L.A.-established artists as teachers.
