Meet the Kroger Muralists

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John Lackey

John Lackey, owner of Lexington gallery and studio Homegrown Press, is a writer, painter, woodblock artist, filmmaker and musician – but he says if he could choose just one art form, it would be painting.

“It’s like conducting an orchestra, playing an instrument and dancing all at once,” Lackey said of the art form, adding that the physical act can be both liberating and healing. “You’re standing up straight, you’re moving – and if you screw up, you can paint over it.”

Of the three murals commissioned by Kroger and LexArts, Lackey’s is the largest, with five 12-by-7-foot panels spanning the exterior Kroger wall facing Marquis Avenue. The mural’s location carries special significance for the self-taught artist, who has been painting for about 12 years – he spent many of his formative years in a family home on Marquis (back when it was called Lafayette) and found out recently that his ancestors used to live in a house sitting precisely where the mural will be hung.

The large-scale commission is a challenge Lackey was humbled and excited to address.

“How often am I going to get to make a 60-foot-long public painting?” he noted during the painting process. “I have an opportunity to make something special for people, and I’m going to do it.”

After meditating on a subject that would carry special meaning for Euclid Avenue Kroger patrons, Lackey ultimately decided to focus his mural on scenes from a popular Chevy Chase epicenter a block away from the grocery store, Woodland Park.

“For people who have a soft spot in their hearts for that Kroger, there is a good chance they also had at least a fling with Woodland Park,” he said.

The mural includes imagery from the skate park, the pool’s iconic pirate ship, gypsy dancers during the Woodland Art Fair and 1980’s punks with mohawks headed down to the softball field. Drawing creative inspiration from his own youth melded with contemporary scenes, Lackey worked on the mural for over two months from his North Limestone studio – seven days a week, sometimes for 10 hours a day.

“This is the hardest one to do,” Lackey said, pointing to the pool panel, and one can clearly see why. The panel embodies the classic spirit of summertime childhood memories and the whimsical psychedelia of “Alice in Wonderland” all at once: A tree trunk morphs into a diving board for a joyous woman in a red bikini to make her spirited splash, and the blue of the sky and pool water are one and the same, the cerulean shade welcoming viewers to dream and decide their own reality.

At the top of the painting, a cardinal sitting in a tree nods to the favorite bird of Lackey’s grandmother, who encouraged his art at a young age (UK fans are not to worry – a wildcat is present in the mural as well). Remembering the first coloring markers his mother gave him, Lackey said he drew the family cat and the Beatles, but his grandmother inspired him to do more.

“She gave me some pencils and paper and said ‘try to draw these models in this magazine,’” Lackey said. “There was a lot of shading; that really broke through.”

Speaking of breakthroughs, a recent one for Lackey is the new stop motion film project he has in the works, “The Great Miss Fortune.” Using the north Lexington neighborhood as a backdrop, he wants the film to ultimately tell a vivid story utilizing local actors, musicians and technicians, as well as painting, collage and photography. The project, which received more than $20,000 in crowd-sourced funding last year, has been put on the back burner these past couple months as Lackey focused on the mural, but he’s excited to dive back into the film now that the mural project is wrapped up.

Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of Lackey’s career, however, is giving new meaning to community by opening his studio doors to anyone who wants to come in and watch his process. Lots of people drop by with a doughnut in hand from the neighboring North Lime Coffee and Doughnuts, curious about Lackey’s curlicue trees and bright flowers. He also gives paints and supplies to the neighborhood kids to foster their own creativity.

He points to the mural, where the pool and the flowerbed morph together in fantastical harmony. “People love their rules. I’m trying to show all the other stuff,” Lackey said. “I’m trying to show people how to have their own rules and guidelines.

“Some kids come in and see it right away."

Liz Swanson

Liz Swanson is a professor of architecture at the University of Kentucky, but she spent most of her mornings during November and December working at ArtsPlace on the mural commissioned by Kroger and LexArts, before going to work at the university.

Arriving recently at ArtsPlace Performance Hall, Swanson wore sweat pants and a warm sweater with her curly hair pulled back to avoid the paint. She looked like the quintessential artist: her pants brushed with thin strokes of paint, as if she had used the cotton material as a palette to take the excess off her brush. Swanson’s mural will hang above the dining area inside the new Kroger. She is excited it will be lit and hung so that it will be visible from Euclid Avenue.

“It was an amazing opportunity to do something large scale,” Swanson said about the nine-paneled, 36-foot-wide piece.

With eye-catching layers of bright colors, fields full of greens and yellows, skies moody with deep purples and blues, it looks like a kaleidoscope of Lexington and the surrounding area. Her mural contains images of the Kentucky palisades, horse barns, downtown buildings, the University of Kentucky and, of course, the Chevy Chase neighborhood where the supermarket is located.

“It’s different scenes that zoom in and out of various slices of Lexington life,” Swanson explained.

The mural is reminiscent of Swanson’s background in urban planning and landscape projects. Currently she is working on a project on community identity, using the Lyric Theatre as a subject. With the project, she aims to answer the question: What makes a place specific and unique?

This mural responds to that question in terms of Lexington. With extreme thoughtfulness, everything in the mural points to unique features of the city and state, from a patch of native wildflowers to an abstract map of Man O’ War and New Circle roads circling around the city.

The mural itself is a collaboration with the community. Swanson used donated paints from Deco Art Paint from Stanford, Ky., and invited 18 energetic kindergartners from her son’s class at Sayre School to make their own mark on the painting. Each child from the class participated by stamping his or her thumbprint as a fossil in the palisade river rocks.

Collaboration is something the Chicago native enjoys, and she sees this mural as a part of the bigger scope of local arts in the city.

“There is such a street art and mural renaissance in Lexington,” she said.

“To be a part of that energy is exciting.”

Aaron and Jared Scales (BroCoLoco)

Aaron and Jared Scales are excited to do a project for their hometown. Two years ago, the brothers-turned-business partners opened up a company, BroCoLoco, in which they help corporations share their story through art and architecture. BroCoLoco mainly serves large national and international corporations, but this mural is one of the brothers’ few local projects.

The business hinges on the idea of bringing art to the masses, not by making art and trying to sell it, but by working with developers in the early stages to incorporate installations in a cohesive and powerful way. For example, for a German coffeehouse that values creativity and helping developing countries, BroCoLoco designed and installed inspired art pieces including a mural stitched from 300 square feet of international newsprint; for other installations, they have used half a billion tribal beads and six miles of Peruvian Alpaca yarn.

“It’s about being for the community. If the general audience can’t understand the piece, that’s not really public art. It’s just art that’s public,” Aaron Scales said.

Aaron’s background in architecture and Jared’s expertise in street art make this duo dynamic. Behind closed doors, Jared first started experimenting with spray paint five years ago. He was drawn to the grit of street art but wanted to do something bigger and better than vandalism. He has painted several murals from Lexington to Berlin.

While working in Washington, D.C., with embassies, Aaron was intrigued by the idea that a building could be an ambassador for a culture. When he realized that the buildings were more security-focused than design-focused, he turned to art to make that idea possible and partnered with his artist brother to design and create art for unique spaces.

The brothers set out to enliven spaces and bring the soul of architecture to life, and that’s just what they did with the mural they were commissioned to create for the produce section of the Euclid Avenue Kroger.

The mural consists of a cart and horse with a variety of fruits and vegetables. One of the wooden boxes topples free, and brightly colored citrus, apples (Kentucky’s largest fruit crop) and corn (Kentucky’s largest vegetable crop) explode to the forefront of the painting; the flesh of the fruit swirl in an almost palatable pattern. With the brothers’ forethought and planning, the mural is installed at a 45-degree angle, spanning two walls and creating a dramatic effect, as if the fruit is jumping out at the surprised viewer.

The brothers both grew up appreciating other cultures and have traveled to 30 different countries for business, leisure and humanitarian efforts. Aaron Scales is influenced by Japanese woodblock prints, and his brother, by street art (think intense stenciling, not spray graffiti). Both styles are evident in the mural, from the swirling, darkly outlined citrus fruit to the stencil-inspired wheat field.

“This project is exciting because we were asked to submit for a part of town that we really wanted to impact,” Aaron said, adding that both brothers lived in the Chevy Chase neighborhood at different periods in their lives. “We wanted to leave a piece of what we are doing here in Lexington – not just exporting.”

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