Sophy Tuttle at Zone3

Over the last few weeks, Brooke and I documented Sophy Tuttle working on her mural at Zone3, which is part of the Walls on Western initiative. A little background…Graffito has been working with Harvard University since way back in 2105 to help develop strategy around retail planning, place management + activation, and urban design along the Western Ave corridor in Allston. The goal has always been to try to plant the seeds of a vibrant commercial corridor that the neighborhood has been striving for decades and that would be important as thousands of new Harvard community members began coming to Allston when the University’s new School of Engineering and Applied Sciences campus eventually opened here. The place management + activation side of the work manifested into Zone 3, a “Harvard-sparked initiative to further activate and energize Western Ave with creative programs, events, retail experiments, and public art.”

Walls On Western, which has been one of Zone 3’s most successful programs, is a mural-focused public art program intended to highlight Boston area artists with a connection to the Allston and Brighton area. Located at 135 Western Avenue, Tuttle’s stunning new mural “Interconnected” is the 7th mural installed in the Walls on Western program. It’s the largest mural to date for Walls on Western and also for Tuttle. Sophy states on the Zone3 website website that, “the designs play on the idea of a textbook illustration of a food web. I remember as a kid looking at my biology textbooks and really enjoying the images of plants and animals and seeing how they supported each other. To me, these illustrations are a really nice example of art and science combined.”

For more information about the mural, including a Q&A with the artist, go here!

A few of my drone pics were included in a recent Globe article, but here are several other pics from her installation for fun. And, a nice little video filmed and edited by Brooke is also below.

BTW…These murals take a ton of planning and logistical coordination. Our friends and collaborators at Isenberg Projects have been a project managing many Zone 3 efforts and art installations and their help in managing this massive mural has critical to making it a success.

Enjoy the pics and go check the mural in person!