MINI MURALS MAKE BIG IMPACT
Rex and Isabella Quiles play a game when they’re in the car running errands with their parents. The 8- and 10-year-old siblings challenge one another to see who can spot the most Mini Murals.
The Quiles’ parents, Noah and Elia Quiles, founded Mini Murals in 2015, a public art project that taps local artists to paint traffic signal control boxes with colorful murals.
There are now about 220 Mini Murals (minimurals.org) throughout Houston. The project recently expanded to Austin, with the first four Mini Murals in the state capital being completed this month.
“It’s sort of like a treasure hunt,” Noah Quiles says of a self-guided tour families can take to find Mini Murals. “If we happen to be in a community that has a lot, we literally shout them out. It’s like a game who can see them first — the best is finding one we haven’t seen before.”
Last fall, the Quiles released free maps for download that detail the location of Mini Murals in areas including downtown, Northside and East End. The maps make it easier for a family to cover an area by foot, bike or car to take pictures with their favorite Mini Murals, Elia Quiles says.
Intersection of life and art
On their quest, a family will find utility boxes painted to resemble a music speaker, mosaic tiles, papel picado, a rocket ship, book-lined shelves and a light switch.
Many of the murals are a nod to things found in nature, including a series of four boxes near the Houston Zoo covered with a zebra, frog, eagle and elephant.
Others depict recognizable figures, including Martin Luther King Jr., Frida Kahlo and Malala Yousafzai.
The Willie Nelson mural by GelsonD.Lemus (also known by the artist name asw3r3on3), located at 34th and Ella, is the mural most often posted on Instagram, Noah Quiles says.
The Quileses were inspired to start the mural project after becoming aware of utility-box art in Auckland, New Zealand, and Dublin, Ireland. The project is about “creating art in unexpected places,” Noah Quiles says.
The most recent Mini Mural was unveiled this month. In partnership with District C, a box at West 43rd and West T.C. Jester in Oak Forest is a tribute to the late first lady Barbara Bush.
Keeping an eye out
Jill Jarvis, mom of four, says her kids keep their eyes peeled for traffic-box murals when they’re in the car “because they know I will stop.” The murals make for a fun photo op, she says.
“You can find them everywhere you go,” she says. “They take something boring, or even ugly, and make it beautiful.”
Currently, the family’s favorite is a Lego character traffic light mural in the Westchase District. The mural is not part of the Mini Murals project.
Local artist Anat Ronen has painted several Mini Murals. The process usually takes about two days, she says, and when she’s painting, drivers honk and shout to “show their appreciation.”
Ronen, a full-time artist who primarily paints large-scale murals, says a utility-box mural can be as “daunting” as a mural that covers an entire exterior wall of a building. The level of detail is more time-consuming when the “canvas” is smaller, she says, because the art will be encountered from up close and from afar.
When she completed a Mini Mural on South Gessner with a wood-grain background and a raccoon peering out of a dark hole, the scene was so realistic she heard accounts of minor fender benders.
“They went nuts for it,” she says. “It really does its job.”
Her utility-box murals that “have a little bit of interaction and humor” are the biggest draw for children, she says, including one that looks like an open box of crayons, which she says was inspired by Houston’s diversity.
Another of her favorites is located at Bissonnet and Wilcrest and makes viewers feel they are peering through the glass of an aquarium.
“I enjoy the fact that’s it’s a close encounter with the public,” she says of the small work that she describes as “approachable.”
“It’s a great way to spread public art or art period,” Ronen says. “It’s art in the open. Art for everybody.”