You may have noticed a gigantic canvas painting going up over in Scott’s Addition recently.
You may have noticed a gigantic canvas painting going up over in Scott’s Addition recently. If you haven’t I suggest you jet over there and see it, because not only is it amazing artwork, but there’s a lot of history behind it and the mural was painted by none other then two Richmond artists.
Sign designer and painter Ross Trimmer and longtime RVA muralist Mickael Broth just finished up a large mural on the side of The Preserve at Scott’s Addition, an apatment complex in the area last Thursday.
In a matter of three days, the two local artists, managed to incorporate a little bit of everything into the painting to pay homage to the history of Scott’s Addition.
“We had the basic idea of doing the history of Scott’s Addition and do what the neighborhood’s morphing into because it’s definitely changing all the time,” said painter Ross Trimmer. “We’re getting more and more murals all the time, but almost nnoe of them relate in any way to what they’re on or where they are. “I think in the last few years there’s been like a big change in Richmond where neighborhood identity is starting to be a big thing.”
For over two years, Trimmer has primarily painted letters and signs for his business Sure Hand Signs. Prior to that, He was a tattoo artist in Richmond for 10 years designing tattoos at a number of places including Salvation, Red Dragon, Lucky 13, and True Tattoo.
Trimmer said The Preserve at Scott’s Addition is a longtime client of his and they were intrigued by the idea of having a mural like this on their building.
“We worked with Taylor Andrew at The Preserve,” he said. “They were really interested in doing something kind of related to that.”
After a few drafts, Broth and Trimmer had the idea fleshed out for the mural.
“He {Broth} did the main pictorials, the railroad worker and the girl on the bike,” Trimmer said. “I did the lettering, and all the buildings and background. “It worked out really well because we have very different styles.”
Initially, the two artists, who grew up skateboarding together in Northern Virginia, were worried about their different styles clashing in the mural, but Trimmer said they were pleased with the final piece.
“It took both of us out of our comfort zones, like, we both definitely painted differently than we do on a regular basis, which I think made it more fun,” he said. “We were extremely happy with the way it turned out.”
The mural is 16 feet x 20 feet and is displayed on the side of The Preserve over a parking lot which directly faces traffic on Roseneath Road.
Broth and Trimmer painted it on the wall, but Talley Sign Company installed a large metal frame and stretched a large canvas onto that.
“It’s literally like a giant painting on a wall,” Trimmer said.
The mural depicts a little piece of every part of Scott’s Addition from over the years. At the top left, there’s a railroad worker clutching a wrench and a lantern, representing the railroad which emerged in the area in the early 1900s and was a driving force in growth of the locality.
Trimmer said the worker was also modeled after the artists’ friends Michael Ramey who passed away recently.
The mural also shows a female biker in the foreground, and in the right-hand corner is a tilted glass of craft beer from Ardent Craft Ales, which opened in Scott’s Addition in June 2014.
In the top background of the mural sits a large old-fashioned Coca-Cola bottle, a nod to the old Coca-Cola Bottling Company, Inc. which bottled and distributed the soft drink from the early 1900s up until the company was sold in the early 2000s. That same bottling plant is now The Preserve.
The old Interbake Foods factory sits in the far background. The building opened as a bakery plant in 1927 for Southern Biscuit Works. Baked goods were packaged under the Famous Foods of Virginia name. In 1946, Southern Biscuit became part of Toronto-based food processor and distributor George Weston Limited and in 1967 it was combined with other U.S. bakeries under the Interbake name. Last year, the building was converted to The Cookie Facotry Lofts.
Trimmer said his studio, Studio two Three, is the building depicted right in the center behind the Ardent beer glass.
The artist added he’s hoping to do more murals that tell the stories of Richmond around town in the future.
“We’re hoping we can do more of these in other neighborhoods and make it kind of a welcoming piece to each neighborhood,” he said.
