All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena wanted to renovate its donor wall with a design that shared the church’s message of radical inclusion and generally “popped” — drawing attention to the families and individuals that have contributed to the church’s growth.
The story, of the how the brilliant mural was created by local artist Joseph Stoddard, started with a mustard seed of faith aided by a lot of serendipity.
The Church wanted to renovate the donor wall with something that popped and caught people’s attention. They wanted an inspiring environment as they had outgrown the legacy wall initially installed in 1997. The idea of a mural came up to complement new glass panels and a commissioned watercolor painting. This coincided with an equipment acquisition by Bay Cities earlier in the year and the desire of Covina-based Sign Designers to work with Bay Cities.
The church hired Stoddard to create a watercolor painting. Dennis at Sign Designers connected with Bay Cities. The glass panels were outsourced. Bay Cities printed on its newly-acquired Vutek press that prints at 1,000 DPI – the highest resolution for this press that was run at a slow speed, crucial for ensuring the highest possible detail quality for wall art of this caliber.
“Offering my artistic talents to this church has been a highlight of my career as an artist,” said Stoddard.
The project required coordination of a lot of moving parts – artist, church personnel, sign designers, printers, outside vendors, installers and support personnel totaling more than 15 people. All logistics came together miraculously within five months.
Sign Designers suggested optimal wall materials and protective layers. Installation was flawlessly executed by Sergio Ortega, an experience professional installer who now works on installation projects for numerous Bay Cities projects.
It took upwards of 30 materials, printing two separate sections of self adhering 180-10 top-of-the-line 3M material coated with a protective laminate, used to safeguard the print from liquid spills near the piece.
Church leaders and congregants were elated with the end result and held a welcoming ceremony for the new mural, claiming that it represents the church’s values of radical inclusion, courageous justice, joyful spirituality and ethical stewardship
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