By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
The painters from Brickmob of Wichita applied the final coat of paint this weekend to a new mural on the south side of the STEM Harvest building, 507 Main, Hays.
Brickmob is co-owned by Chris Garcia and his wife, Nicky Rocho. The art for the mural was created by Joe Worley.
The mural was made possible thanks to a grant from the Beach Family Foundation.
Garcia said STEM Harvest's owner, Dallas Haselhorst, wanted a mural in a different style than others in Hays and that would promote the science mission of STEM Harvest, which is a nonprofit organization primarily focused on kids' STEM education, especially technologies such as programming, 3D printing, prototyping and electronics.
The mural, which is an urban, graphic-novel design, showcases Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla and technology in general, Garcia said.
Tesla can be seen with lightning bolts in his hands that shoot down into the electric charging station on the south wall of the building.
It also includes the following "Easter Eggs": the Linux Penguin, the debugging "moth" popularized by Admiral Grace Hopper, the Konami code, MST3k and the symbol for a black hole.
You can learn more about the mural and its "Easter Eggs" at stemharvest.org/stem-harvest-mural/.
Painting began in May, but Garcia said the project has been in the works for several years. The mural took about 250 hours of painting time.
Garcia said painting conditions were not ideal over the weekend. Winds were gusting to 40 mph, and high temperatures were in the upper nineties.
Garcia, a graduate of Wichita State University, co-founded Brickmob with several other artists in 2014.
"I had a day job, but I wanted to continue doing my artwork, so I reached out to three other artists whom I thought could work well together, I could work well with and could bring something to the table," he said.
They started selling prints, T-shirts and small sculptures at art fairs.
They had the opportunity to do a mural at an art festival in Wichita.
"We all fell in love with it immediately," he said of mural painting. "There was something about being outside and working in the elements and fresh air and seeing your artwork on a grand scale for everyone to enjoy."
"We were literally changing the landscape of where we were at," he said.
In Kansas, the Brickmob has also created murals in El Dorado, Valley Center, Goddard, Osawatomie, Kansas City and Hillsboro. They have also painted murals in Oklahoma and Texas.
One of the company's significant goals is to employ artists and pay them a fair wage.
However, Garcia and his wife love to take on projects that involve kids or socially driven programs.
The STEM Harvest mural fit perfectly within that mission, Garcia said.
Garcia said he thought the new mural will be a complementary addition to the other murals in downtown Hays. The crew took time to drive around Hays and view the other murals in the community.
"There is definitely some skill here. I can appreciate that," he said.
"There's a lot of realism and things that have to do with history and the Western aesthetic for artwork, which is really cool. We embrace that too. But with [our mural] being more graphical and brightly colored, I didn't see anything like this in town. This one is really going to stand out in comparison."