Crafting a Time Travel Mart Mural

creating interactive community fun

By Teresa SheaPublished 5 years ago • 3 min read

a time lapsed interactive creation

One of my favorite recent projects was creating a photo opportunity/interactive collage mural out of recycled materials for the Mar Vista Time Travel Mart grand reopening.

I first discovered this unique place on one of our night time jaunts around the neighborhood.

In honor of my birthday, I had decided to donate two big bags of books to the local

free little libraries, one of which just happened to be located in front of this odd place called The Time Travel Mart. Curious, I went back a few days later, when they were actually open, and went inside to discover a fun, quirky, time travel-themed store in the front that supported a kids’ tutoring and writing workshop space in the back. My kind of wonderful, weird, and witty!

I had recently moved into the Grandview fine arts studios and was finally going to be a participating artist in my first Mar Vista community art walk! The Organizer/Curator asked if I knew about The Time Travel Mart, and, considering the costume/ sculpture art nature of my work, would I like to create something for the Grand Reopening of their new and improved store and writing workshop space?

I said, Yes! Absolutely!

Their theme for the evening was a Time Traveler Carnival, so I chose to create an interactive photo opportunity mural out of canvas and recycled materials. And I decided to create this piece, live, during the event.

Armed with my trusty Fiskars scissors; quilt basters/taggers; and all sorts of fun materials, including: garbage bags and recycled reusable grocery bags; zip ties; hat bits; what-nots; and the help of my trusty cohort Tim, we pulled up, unloaded and began.

We set up a sturdy 12-foot popup frame and stretched blank canvas across one side. Strung lights up to the roof and back. The folks from Time Travel Mart and volunteers set up a small stage, popcorn poppers, and cotton candy, creating a timeless festival atmosphere, with local artists popping up all around amidst music and vendors , and people of all ages drifting in to see the sights.

We even rigged a camera at the beginning capture a time-lapse of the creative fun and hopefully the constantly-changing faces.

I quickly sketched a couple of vintage, carnival-costumed people and two performing kids,

cutting flaps at all 4 of the faces so passers-by could participate by poking their faces into the image. With, of course, a step stool behind so anyone could reach to pop their face through.

I then began to cut up all sorts of colorful garbage bags and grocery bags, and bits of recycled items, and apply them with taggers and pins and zip-ties.

It was such a delight to share the process with everyone, kids and grownups alike. Showing them all my tools and techniques. My hand-saving, spring-loaded scissors were a huge hit. And my taggers too, like a store price-tagging tool, but daintier.

I even had several big bins of giveaway hats for folks to decorate with cut-up recycled bits and bobs. The awesome looks of delight, when I had a kid gather a bunch of colorful plastic bags in their fist, tie the base, snip, snip with the scissors and VOILA! instant colorful flowers to festoon their new hat!

So much fun and goofy hijinks with people sticking their faces into the mural and with their friends taking pictures, all throughout the making of the piece .

At the end of the evening, when the folks from Time Travel Mart asked if they could keep and hang the recycled mural inside the writing center, I answered with another, Yes! Absolutely!