The EQT Three Rivers Regatta is famous for its powerboat races, concerts and fireworks, but this year, the largest collaborative mosaic flash mural ever will make an appearance.
“Moving the Lives of Kids Community Mural project” (MLK Mural) and ImaginePittsburgh.com have teamed up to create the EnviroMural.
“It’s unlike any we have ever done at MLK Mural Project and unlike any we’ve seen around the country or around the world," said executive artist Kyle Holbrook. "The reason is it involves 2,400 participants, this is families, people of all ages, kids to seniors.”
The mural will show various green activities — boating, fishing, biking and some industry — that take place along the Three Rivers.
ImaginePittsburgh.com Executive Vice President Bill Flanagan said the EnviroMural will be created as a celebration of the strides Pittsburgh has taken to become a green city.
“If you go back 70 years ago this year, the city leaders started talking about building a park and a fountain at the Point," he said. "It took them 30 years to build it. They turned on the fountain in 1974, and really from that time over the last two generations the restoration of Point State Park has really symbolized the environmental transformation of our region as a whole.”
Participants will see the mural registration table in the kids section starting 3 p.m. Tuesday up to Thursday.
Each participant will receive a six-inch square canvas and a grid with the design meant for him or her to create.
“An exciting thing about it is they’ll have the colors they need to make it look like the original gridded image, but there’s also room for interpretation and personalization … so say if they get a section that may be all water, to the overall image when you step back, they can take several blues and maybe they write they write their name in there, maybe they write a message,” Holbrook said.
The mural will be taken down after the Three Rivers Regatta and Fourth of July festivities, but that won’t be the end of it.
Holbrook said MLK Murals has teamed up with Carnegie Mellon University to use GigaPan technology, which is an extremely high-resolution camera that has the ability to clearly zoom in on a large image to something really minute.
“People are going to be able to go on ImaginePittsburgh’s website in the future and see this mural, zoom into a little section, and blow it up and share it with people on Facebook or Twitter or whatever may be, like it and share it with others," Holbrook said. "So it’s an interactive mural not only in the creation of it, but once it’s done, it lives on.”
