Artist Erick Toussaint puts the finishing touches on his seasonal mural in Little Italy
Art, Little Italy, Balboa Park

Murals of Note

By Frank Sabatini Jr.

Who doesn’t love a colorful eye-arresting mural? We came across a couple of impressive ones during our urban wanderings.

Our first encounter was with the new 33-foot mural gracing the atrium of the San Diego Natural History Museum. It was created by local artist and SDSU professor Eva Struble in preparation for the museum’s 150th anniversary next year. The mural is titled “Frasera,” which features an abstract landscape disrupted by graffiti-like markings at itsbase. It catches the attention of visitors from most of the museum’s floors.

Over in Little Italy, renowned chalk artist Erick Toussaint recently depicted the autumn-winter season with a detailed 4 x 20-foot mural on an interior wall at Vino Carta wine bar. Toussaint is from Minnesota but continues visiting San Diego to replace the mural with the passages of the seasons.

“His work just blew us away when we first met him around two years ago,” said Vino Carta managing partner Patrick Barlow. “This current mural represents the range of environs of fall and winter with some beautiful imagery of quail and wild turkey and the boxer dog of one of our staffers. He’s our shop dog named Koa.”

Barlow added that the mural is on a lower section of the wall, at level with customers’ heads. “But we’ve been really lucky with people being gentle and super respectful of it because they’re in awe over the detail.”