Kathryn DeGroot
As America’s Farm-to-Fork Capital, downtown Sac has learned to embrace local produce. There is no better place to get your locally sourced ingredients than from the Downtown Certified Farmers’ Markets. We recruited muralist Andy Garcia to create some colorful street art to shine light on our farmers’ markets.
Downtown Sac: We want to know a bit about you…what can you tell us?
Andy: My name is Andy, and I like drawing, painting, and I love letters and comics.
DS: Why is art such an important part of Sacramento?
Andy: Public art is important because it can be transformative for both the audience and the people working on it. Sacramento has an amazing art and music scene that set us apart from lots of places. The creative scene keeps growing and producing great artists that do things that are outside of the box and that makes Sacramento stand out.
Photo courtesy of @StreetSac
DS: When we approached you to do a farmers’ market mural, what made you want to get involved?
Andy: I’ve always gone to the farmers’ market in Cesar Chavez Plaza – it is my favorite one. I love the vibrancy of the park during a farmers’ market; it’s like the next best thing to Concerts in the Park. I have a studio a few doors down from this and have always wanted to paint one of these murals. When I went out there the first day to start the piece, my buddy and studio-mate Carlo pulled up and was excited for me because he knew I’d been whining like a baby to paint one for so long.
DS: Well, glad it worked out! Tell us a bit about the concept behind your farmers’ market mural.
Andy: I initially liked the idea of doing a vegetable even somewhere on the mural, but went with just text, color, and texture because I felt like it might be more entertaining. I like cartoon-y stuff. I drew up a really small mock-up in pencil of how I wanted things to fill the space and picked what colors I thought went well together. Then I just went to it.
DS: What’s next for you?
Andy: My band is currently on tour, so I’ve been thinking about that a lot recently.
