The Making of the Allston Memories Mural
By Yetti Frenkel
Josh Winer and I met when we were both working on murals in Brookline along Harvard Street. We waved at each other as we went to our respective walls, and paused in our work to visit one other. That was 30 years ago, and in the intervening years we have occasionally collaborated on projects.
The owner of Value Store It on Commonwealth Avenue, Allston, Todd Ruderman, contacted Josh about creating a mural for his building, one that would celebrate the rich history of the area —car dealerships along Automobile Row, The Mousetrap wine and cheese shop, and more. Value Store It is a
self-storage company that occupies what was once the Brookline Liquor Mart.
The wall for the mural is at an angle to Commonwealth Avenue, facing apartment buildings.
Josh and I researched at the Brighton-Allston Heritage Society. We learned that baseball legend
Ted Williams lived in the area, as did the band Aerosmith. Another resident, philanthropist Ellen Gifford supported charitable causes, including a shelter for homeless cats, which still exists at 30 Undine Road in Brighton. We searched through the archives for photos, picking out one that showed a guy leaning on his 1956 Cadillac, another of an old Packard, a trolley from the area, and a traffic cop on a platform.
The next step was to make a scale drawing of the wall. We placed all our reference photos on the table around the drawing and started to sketch concepts for how to organize the images. We didn’t have to tell a chronological story, so we focused on making the design dynamic and colorful.
The Packard and the Cadillac fit nicely between two windows at the top of the wall, and we drew the Cadillac-Olds building that is now
used by Boston University behind them. We wanted to include a big portrait of Ted Williams, with his triple-decker home in the background. We painted the Mr. Music store with two students walking past it, and the store cat, Frisbee, sitting outside. The old Egyptian theater was
Photo by Bette Keva
Josh Winer and Yetti Frenkel when creating Stories of Lynn in 2014 in downtown Lynn. They teamed up with artist David Fichter for the project.
represented by one of the huge statues of a pharaoh that once adorned the entrance, and the Brookline Liquor Mart signs were included, together with a reproduction of a large art-deco painting of a lady holding a glass of wine. The painting had been on the side of the liquor mart.
Josh and I didn’t wrangle much about the design. This can sometimes be a problem, as artists can be egocentric and headstrong. When we had our design drawn to scale (2/3 of an inch = 1 foot on the wall), we had to create a grid of squares onto it and enlarge it so that each square inch on the grid would equal one square foot on the wall. It is possible to project some murals, even large, exterior ones, but this needed to be drawn up by hand.
To do this, we made a corresponding grid on the wall. Using a chalk line, we snapped horizontal and vertical lines a square foot apart on the whole wall. Then we numbered the lines to correspond to the numbered grid on our paper drawing.
Then it was simply a matter of copying what was in each square inch on our drawing into its twin foot square on the wall. This took about three days. It wouldhave taken two, but we had a little trouble choosing the correct lift. For future reference, a self-leveling. rough-terrain Skyjack is the correct lift to use on uneven ground. Our long-suffering lift rental company gave us a scissor lift, and an even smaller platform lift before we finally ordered the right one.
The days we worked — between July 10 through August 7 — were long and hot, so we rigged up some two by fours and tarps to stay shaded. This worked well because the lift was stable and solid. I once painted a mural with some friends using a rolling scaffold. We rigged up a tarp by tying it to the sides of the scaffold so that it blocked the sun coming in at an angle. We were all painting away happily when we realized that our arms could no longer reach the wall because the wind had caught our tarp and turned it into a sail that was rolling us across the parking lot. By some miracle we didn’t collide with a car or tip over, and releasing the tarp stopped our journey.
Josh and I allowed one another to paint what we preferred or what played to our strengths. We received accolades from the community; neighbors stopped by to say thank you for brightening the area, and folks who had lived there for decades shared memories with us. We told them to thank Todd Ruderman who had the foresight to commission the mural.
I wish more building owners would work directly with muralists. Artists are independent contractors who prefer not to work through middlemen, but rather have one client who can tell them what they want. We are always looking for the next job, and love to remember the satisfaction of a job well done. It was clear from the comments we received from the community that the mural is making a positive difference to the area.
Hey Yetti,
Nicely done. I wonder how many people will find the making of a mural interesting. There are murals everywhere these days — and a welcome sight! Anyway, I think it’s interesting to hear about the Allston neighborhood and some famous people who lived there. What Red Sox now lives in Boston? None! But Ted Williams did.
Bette Keva
This was fascinating, Yetti. Thank you. Both of you are exceptional, talented artists and this mural you have depicted for us is fabulous.