Urban Flora by Katherine Young

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For this mural, the artist created a more classic design but gave it a modern touch. According to the Sprout Fund, Katherine Young worked off of the community’s self–description as both contemporary and historical and combined styles to match the neighborhood’s personality. She chose the colors and metalic finish for the contemporary features and the damask pattern to represent the historic side.

In an article by Rochelle Hentges in Triblive.com, Ms Young explained that the design integrated with elements of the building. She said There’s a stained glass window that’s part of the bar that has an actual design of kind of vines or branches with leaves on them that’s incorporated into one of the trees, and the birds kind of fly out of the window.

What makes the design more interesting though, is the use of negative space. The trees and vines are defined by the lack of paint. The red brick shows through the blue background to create those images. Above the main section of the mural, the blue and lavender pattern separates from the blue background below and to the left the birds in muted colors fly freely across the plain brick wall. This all leaves you with the impression that the mural boundaries are undefined and makes you keep looking for more subtle detail.