Another downtown building gets a paint job

When Joseph Konert was brainstorming what to paint on the side of Harrington’s Café downtown, he went up a few floors of the Mentorship Academy next door. From the windows of the cafeteria there, the kids have a great view of what would be the second wall of the BR Walls Project.

“I knew the kids would see it and I wanted to do something for them,” Konert said as he put the finishing touches on the mural Tuesday afternoon. “I wanted it to brighten up the neighborhood and make it feel alive.”

The wall extends from the corner with a burst of butterflies outlined against a starry night sky and swirling away from a mass of colorful, quilted shapes near the back of the building. “That’s the end of the rainbow,” Konert says. The shapes are similar to the vibrant geometric quilting he painted on the now-closed Red Star bar’s patio back in May.

He’s planning to continue that theme next week on a panel across the front of the restaurant, facing Florida Street, except with a daytime sky and the butterfly outlines filled in. Konert, a New Orleans-based artist, says the mural is dedicated to his mother, “I take a lot of my inspiration from her, and I wanted to paint something that I could dedicate to her.”

Konert is also helping Harrington’s owner Craig Harrington update the signage and identity for the downtown spot known for its lunchtime Southern dishes.

The full mural will be unveiled on Tuesday, Oct. 16, with an event starting at 6 p.m. BR Walls will also present a preview of the third and largest mural at the Mentorship Academy on Florida and Fourth streets, projecting an image of that potential mural on the front of the tall building. The event will help drum up support and raise money so the BR Walls Project can continue pairing artists with blank buildings downtown.

For more information, visit BR Walls Project’s website, or the organization’s Facebook page.