The year-long awaited mural design of the Rivertown Demo Garden’s barn has been completed by Eric Sanchez, and his fall 2022 Art 10 2D Design class, including three volunteers. The local garden is located next to Antioch High School, and the master gardeners converted the recently designed barn into a new office.
Before the garden was introduced to Sanchez’s class, the barn was coated in prime white that was mainly used as a tool shed. Lisa Bramblet, the lead gardener, spoke about how they wanted to improve the garden and one of those improvements was converting the barn interior into an office space for every master gardener’s use. Even though the barn is technically a tool shed, its transformation has earned its name as the Rivertown Barn.
The master gardeners wanted the exterior to be painted with a mural to make the garden more welcoming for visitors. Now they are looking to improve the barn even further by installing a solar skylight since there is no other source of light inside.
“We’re looking to be certified as a native habitat,” said Bramblet. “We want anybody to come here.”
The process began Oct. 6, 2022 when Sanchez’s class first visited the garden and met with the Contra Costa Master Gardeners. Based on that visit, students sketched out several ideas for the mural’s design, using parts of the garden as inspiration. They began painting in November, but were unable to finish by the end of the semester.
Fortunately Sanchez, along with three volunteers, visited the demo garden during the winter break but with their own schedules filling up, the volunteers wrapped up their time in January, 2023 just before Sanchez started the spring semester teaching abroad.
When Sanchez arrived back from teaching abroad, he spent the summertime and fall visiting the garden by himself and completed the mural in October.
The gardeners knew Sanchez through his other classes at LMC visiting the garden, and reached out to him for this particular project. Sanchez took on the project for his class so that they could experience commission work.
Sanchez explained how it was important for his students to learn how to articulate their design and to communicate with clients.
He said this mural design was really “to provide a real world project. Get real work with design projects.
Bramblet has also expressed how important it was for people and students to learn more about the garden and to get live lessons from it itself.
“Our job is to not make money. Our job is to educate the public,” Bramblet said.
The demo garden is open to the public every Tuesday between 10 am and noon. You can visit the garden and see how the mural turned out. The garden will also host an annual Great Tomato Plant Sale, April 20.
Sanchez said that because the process for completing the Rivertown Barn mural took longer than anticipated, he would approach such a project differently next time having his class begin painting sooner in the semester.
