Mural

Ninth Street Bakery recently invested in a new mural above our Downtown space.  I think it really brightens it up, and evokes our from-scratch mentality.  Our organic flour is milled locally at Lindley Mills in Graham, NC, so you know that our flour has been milled from whole grain and used within about two weeks!  That is the main difference between our product and factory-made supermarket products.  No preservatives, no additives, ever.

Before and After

Scott Nurkin, owner of The Mural Shop, is a one-man business.  He saw this project through from start to finish, initially brought in for the job by Julie Cohoon from Center Studio Architecture.  I got to speak with Scott on tape for a little bit to learn more about him and his muraling work.

What was your background in muraling and how did you get started?

I started at UNC in the Painting and Drawing program and got my BFA there.  As soon as I graduated, there was a muralist named Michael Brown who lived in Carrboro who was looking for an apprentice.

I apprenticed for him for 3 years, taking that job right out of school, not thinking I would stick with muraling forever. I spent the summer working for him, then I begged him to work full time which I did for three years, then after three years we amicably parted ways and I struck out on my own.

At the same time I was touring with a band (Birds of Avalon), and it afforded me to make some money and then head out on the road for months at a time.  I did that from 2003 till 2008.  Then the economy tanked, the band slowed down, so I had to figure out what to do next and I decided to commit to muraling full time.

I built a website, and slugged it out from 2008 to 2013, taking any job, whether it be hand-painting signs in peoples' garages or that kind of thing.  I was slowly building up a clientele and a portfolio and the last couple of years it has been pretty good.  For some reason the mural industry is booming right now, and it probably has something to do with street art becoming really popular, with graffiti writers turning into rock stars on social media....so by 2017 the business has been good to me.

How do you incorporate the creative into your commercial jobs?

I try to use my talent to understand what a client wants and shape that direction versus being like, "This is my one style."  I think my style comes out in everything I do though - for instance with Ninth Street, there is a tie in to wheat and breadmaking so that worked out nicely but another example for a job I was recently doing in South Carolina - there is a mixed use space there on top of an industrial cotton mill from the 1800s so all the art references cotton ginning -- I kind of pride myself on using my skills as an artist and what I like and what I reference and incorporating it into what clients want. I use my forces to steer the client, but ultimately it is the client's vision.

What was the process and vision for this project at Ninth Street Bakery?

So this one started a year ago.  The original concept was a wheat tie-in, and I took that idea and ran with it.  It moved from a single stem of wheat to a field of wheat given the linearity of the space and I thought something colorful and impactful would suit the space. So the idea was to do a huge impact right away so that as soon as you turn the corner, you can't help but go, "Whoa, what is that?"  Then there was the decision of doing realistic wheat versus some kind of cartoonish wheat and we ultimately did the realistic wheat because I thought it would be taken more seriously that way.

Luckily this one was so high up that I had a lift and the lift affords me the ability to move really fast up and over the space so I can touch the wall all across the several hundred square feet I had to work -- versus using a ladder where it's a lengthy process of gridding the image out and make sure all the lines are going exactly up and down, stepping back, etcetera.  So I didn't have to grid this one - it was a lot of using the eye on the stem work so that it looked balanced and fit the space and layering the color in.  I also used aerosol on this one which is not something I typically use a lot but I loved it, and I loved the way it responded to my vision of the piece.

So what's next for Scott Nurkin and The Mural Shop?

There is more work here [we are in discussion on a mural on the interior of the Bakery], and there is a project in Raleigh - an inclusionary project -- "Welcome to Raleigh, Y'all" in 16 different languages, to counter some of the political movements that the clients feel are not correct in our State. This is going up near Downtown Raleigh.

After that, there is more work at the cotton mill in South Carolina, as well as some big work for some small towns in North Carolina, Sanford and Carthage, so a lot is coming up.  In terms of expanding what I do, I just spoke with some people about hiring on some extra help, mostly office manager and backoffice help, so hopefully by 2018 we'll have some more employees and the company will have expanded.