Mural promotes positive attitude to shoppers
A vibrant mural that shouts “it’s a good day to have a good day” has turned a wall in Rice Village into an eye-catching design.
The mural by Houston artist Gonzo247 is more than 30 feet wide and 8 feet tall and “took probably 25 to 30 spray cans to paint,” said the graffiti maestro.
It is located next to Black Walnut Café, 5510 Morningside Drive.
Additional art installations are planned for later this year as Trademark Property Co. conducts a multimillion-dollar renovation and rebranding of retail space that it manages in Rice Village, said Pamela Vargas, the company’s assistant general manager and marketing coordinator.
Gonzo247, whose birth name is Mario Enrique Figueroa Jr., came to the attention of Vargas when she went looking for an artist to paint five 6-foot-high fiberglass deer statues positioned throughout Rice Village last Christmas.
“I contacted him a little late last year for ‘Deck the Deer,’ but he will be our artist this year,” said Vargas.
Vargas sought out Figueroa for what he calls “the good day” mural.
“My thought was to let this mural hopefully give people a moment to stop and think, ‘Hey, life is pretty good,’ ” said Figueroa.
“I was assisted by my production assistant, who goes by ‘Jo-Jo,’ ” he said. “He is an allaround big helper. We had a great time.”
A public art event on May 5, or Cinco de Mayo, allowed shoppers to watch the artist s create the mural, which took about three or four hours to complete.
Figueroa, 44, was born in Houston and grew up in Second Ward on the city’s East
End.
“For the longest, that’s about all I knew of the city,” he said.
However, his family occasionally made forays to Rice Village, where they enjoyed the area’s “positive energy.”
“Whenever I come here, it’s the beginning of a good day or the end of a good day, but it’s always a good day,” he said.
In 1990, Figueroa graduated from North Shore Senior High School in Galena Park, where he acquired a reputation as a “gonzo,” or freewheeling and unconventional, graffiti artist.
“When I first started out, it was more about the commandeering of wall space as an outlet for being creative,” he said. “The illegal side of spray-painting still happens.
“If you’ve never gone out in the middle of the night and spray-painted on a wall, it’s hard to explain why somebody does it: It could be literally proclaiming that they exist; it could be being creative; sometimes, it’s territorial.”
As Gonzo247, Figueroa founded a company called Aerosol Warfare, at 2110 Jefferson St. Suite 111.
It creates art, murals and team-based productions on a local, national and international level, including last month’s 20-by-60-foot mural in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico to promote tourism to Houston.
“His many noteworthy achievements include the design and painting of the popular ‘Houston Is…’ mural for the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau and the design and painting of the impressive mural in the Downtown Houston Public Library Parking Garage,” said Vargas.
For information about Rice Village, visit www. RiceVillageDistrict.com and for information about Gonzo247, visit www.aerosolwarfare.com. Don Maines is a freelance writer who can be reached at donmaines@att.net