On Shaky Ground

Risking It All For Art

- Michael Sieben

Last month, my buddy Tim Kerr and I painted a mural at an elementary school in Austin, Texas. I spearheaded the project and had to manage all aspects of the mural’s production, part of which included renting a scissor lift to access the wall upon which we were to be painting. The ground underneath the site was dirt, and I proposed to the school the idea of pouring a concrete sidewalk on which to drive the scissor lift. No dice—too much red tape involved. The backup plan was hiring a landscaping company to level the soil and laying down three-quarter-inch plywood as a surface. Seemed like it could work, but the hypothesis was untested. Sometimes you gotta roll the dice, though.