A splash of color
East End aquarium mural depicts elaborate underwater scenes
A 260-foot-long aquarium of sorts has popped up in a remote corner of the East End, between Hidalgo Park and the Houston Ship Channel’s Turning Basin: It’s a new mural called “Turtle Soup,” which the East End Management District commissioned from Up Art Studio.
A bit of a soup it is, for those who might think it depicts species in the murky waters of Buffalo Bayou nearby. Porpoises, check. Jellyfish, check, if the tides are right. Goldfish, maybe, set free by misguided souls. Giant sea turtles, not so much. Or the tropical varieties of finned wonders that artist Pilot FX has painted there, whose names he doesn’t know.
He just liked the aesthetic value of their vivid colors, he said.
Pilot, whose legal name is Adam Socie, excels at realistic depictions of all kinds of figurative subjects on a large scale. He also creates murals for the city’s fire stations and has done more mini-murals on Houston traffic boxes than he can count. And he’s painted quite elaborate underwater scenes that cover entire rooms of clinics and other types of businesses.
Area resident Jesse Rodriguez, a graphic designer who lives in the neighborhood, helped.
“We’re just trying to bring color back into the neighborhood,” Rodriguez said. He often sees families taking the Port of Houston’s free boat tours. “Kids get all excited when they board the boat, but then everything they see is gray and rusty. There’s nothing bright to look at and enjoy.”
Although the area could look greener soon.
The mural, in the 7400 block of J.W. Peavy, fills a tapered concrete wall retaining what might pass for a hill in Houston, between a couple of liquid tank storage facilities. But it’s a block or so from the city-owned Hidalgo Park, which in the not-too-distant future will be connected via a hike-and-bike trail at its other end to Harris County’s 2-year-old Yolanda Black Navarro Buffalo Bend Nature Park.
Buffalo Bayou Partnership president Anne Olson said her organization recently acquired trail easements and properties between the two parks, which are less than a mile apart. The latest acquisitions of about 13 acres provide a clear shot between 11-acre Hidalgo Park, which has a historic faux bois gazebo and neighborhood ball fields, and the 10-acre nature park, which contains wetland ponds, a cistern, native plantings, an overlook and hike-andbike trails. That begins to look like a significant amount of green space.
For now, both parks are relatively unknown to outsiders, in an area where small neighborhoods of modest frame houses are separated from Buffalo Bayou by industrial complexes. The waterway makes a natural, sharp “S” curve just before it expands into the Houston Ship Channel’s Turning Basin.
Olson said the partnership plans to work with the county and city to develop a plan to connect the two parks. Her group also has a larger masterplanning effort underway along this stretch of Buffalo Bayou and will be seeking input from neighborhood residents after the first of the year.
Beyond the mural, J.W. Peavy winds through overgrown, vacant land that looks ripe for whatever comes next. Several years ago, community volunteers cleared brush and built a mulched walking path on an abandoned rail spur. The decrepit, circa 1939 U.S. Appraisers Stores Building looms nearby like a set from an Alfred Hitchcock film. Customs officials once inspected goods coming through the port there.
This place has serious potential, if it is redeveloped responsibly in a way that doesn’t displace families who have lived nearby for several generations.
“It will be interesting to see what the neighborhood wants to happen,” Olson said.
In the meantime, a pair of exhibits at the partnership’s office could help jump-start conversations.
University of Houston students have proposed installations and events for next spring along the bayou’s East End sector with “Encounter: Meeting Points on Buffalo Bayou.” Architectural designer Jae Boggess documents neglected industrial and commercial buildings in the area with her photography show “Eastside as Found.”
Both exhibits can be viewed 9 a.m.-5 p.m. through Jan. 29 at the Sunset Coffee Building, 1019 Commerce.