Muralist Rick Sinnett Gets His Kicks on Route 66

ST has long celebrated the cultural impact of vintage neon signage along Route 66, the U.S. “Mother Road” that once continuously linked Chicago and L.A. (see ST, November 2003, page 86). Rick Sinnett, a Tulsa-based, multimedia artist, has added two murals along Oklahoma’s Route 66 stretch as another facet of the road’s graphic legacy – with plans for more.

The first mural idea germinated when Mary Beth Babcock, a Tulsa entrepreneur who owns Dwelling Spaces (a trendy clothing boutique) and serves as project manager for Public Arts Project 66, purchased a pen-and-ink Sinnett sketch entitled “Indian Warrior.” She asked him if he would consider rendering this vividly colored artwork as a Mother Road public-art project on the side of Rose Pawn Shop in Tulsa’s Blue Dome arts district.

Babcock secured the site. To subsidize the project, Public Arts Route 66 sold T-shirts that depict the “Indian Warrior” design, and Williams & Williams Real Estate Auctions significantly contributed. Wayne Coyne, the lead signer of alternative-rock band The Flaming Lips, and an avid supporter of public art, touted Sinnett’s project through various social-media outlets and his art gallery, Womb.

Sinnett and his assistant, Jake Harms, began the decoration process with power-washing and then applying a durable basecoat with high UV resistance. They progressed with several coats of flat-finish latex with heavily concentrated pigments for added visual oomph. They worked on the project for slightly more than a week.

He first attempted to project his image onto the wall, but the 30 x 50-ft. mural’s sheer size and the swirling Great Plains winds made it difficult to create precise images.

Harms suggested they create giant cardboard stencils. They purchased 20, 4 x 8-ft. sheets of cardboard, laid them out, and taped them together on a large warehouse floor. He inkjet-printed the image outlines in 3-ft.-wide sections, and spray-tacked the outline to the cardboard. Then, Sinnett and Harms cut stencils out of the massive cardboard assembly.

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Sinnett said, “We later learned that we’d probably just made the world’s largest stencils.”

He continued, “I’ve spent approximately 20 years mastering serigraphy [stencilmaking with paint on paper], but my work also includes letterpress printmaking, glass etching and sculpting,” Sinnett said. “I thought her suggestion of transforming the Indian Warrior piece into a supersized mural was a great idea.”

The duo painted the project using premium, 2-in.-wide, cut-in brushes to complete all the line work and circles. To paint large swaths, they used well-made, standard-size rollers and, for finer work, 3-in.-wide rollers to block in colors.

Officials in El Reno, OK offered a site for the second Route 66 mural project, entitled “Guardian of the Mother Road.” He decided to drive around town and scout for other “canvases” that were off the beaten path (a fitting overall characterization for Route 66 given modern reliance on interstate-highway travel) and settled on a more remote location.

Contributions made through www.kickstarter.com, a public-art funding platform, bankrolled the El Reno project.

“Murals are different than other types of public art,” Sinnett said. “They can take a week or two to develop, and the production is right there in plain view. Murals tend to attract onlookers and the media, and public excitement builds.”

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Sinnett and Babcock are planning up to 11 murals to be painted over the next year across the Sooner State’s stretch of Route 66. Their next project entails an ambitious undertaking near Oklahoma City. Sinnett and Harms will create a 128 x 100-ft. mural that will span two walls near I-40, which runs through Oklahoma City. The mural, titled “This Land,” will feature iconic Oklahoma images: the state bird and wildflower, the scissor-tail flycatcher and the Indian paintbrush; buffalo; golden wheat; and leaves from the catalpa bean tree.

“When you’re working in a small town, you generally only need the approval of the property owner
and a city-issued permit to paint a mural,” Sinnett said. “But, when you’re working in a larger city,
a historic-preservation board or similar organization with authority has to sign off on the project.”

He continued, “Because they’ve worked so well before, I’ll again use stencils. I began with a design that has a certain flow, and studied the curvature of the walls to account for layout. I’ll complete each side in thirds, starting in the center and moving side to side to ensure symmetry. First, I’ll apply a light blue basecoat, then follow with outlining the stencil, which is the black line, then proceed to fill in the colors and various radiant fills.”