Italian Street Painting Marin Pop Up Gallery, June 28-29, 2014

This year we were invited to participate in the Italian Street Painting Marin's Pop-Up Gallery - a gathering of twenty invited artists who came together to do street paintings around the theme of "California in the 1940's". For our image we decided to create a painting to celebrate the tens of thousands of "Victory Gardens" that were planted by Californians to help in the war effort. While researching the subject, we found an interesting historical essay about San Francisco's Victory Gardens, written by one of the primary organizers, John Brucato.

We began our image with a World War II propaganda poster encouraging people to plant victory gardens. The image shows a family (a man and his wife and daughter) happily rolling a wheelbarrow full of "soil" over the hill with their tools. The image was bright and cheery, but cartoonish. And if one was trying to promote a victory garden, why not celebrate a cornucopia of vegetables rather than a wheelbarrow of BS?



We decided to use photographs for our own propaganda poster. The image stars our brother-in-law as the farmer and some friends as the rest of the laughing happy family of gardeners.

Rick Smith, our famous Dairy Farmer brother-in-law, stood in for us as "the gardener"

Our cornucopia of vegetables: Pumpkins, Eggplant, Carrots, Onions, and Squash (yum!) and beets (yuck!)

In San Francisco tens of thousands of Victory Gardens were planted. We added the Golden Gate Bridge to the background to celebrate the local effort.

The smiling happy gardening mom.

Midday Saturday. Sunset gardening in the Marin headlands.

Marlon Yanes and his niece came along on Saturday and helped us with a pumpkin. For the rest of the weekend, everyone that came along said, "wow, look at that pumpkin!"

Sunday Morning. Rakes! hoes! Overalls!

And just look at the garden grow! Sunflowers! And grass!

Adding in detail in the background.

And then came the cabbages. We flipped a coin over who got to do the cabbages. Wayne lost.

The Golden Gate Bridge, before they tilted it up into place. Lily the gardener seems oddly OK with that.

Rick the gardener. Fresh vegetables for dinner!

Victoria the Victory Gardener.

Laughing happy gardener. I wonder if she knows that there will be beets for dinner.

Purple cabbages and Marlon's pumpkin

The top view, showing the fully distorted image.

The completed Marin County Victory Garden painting.

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