36The Quilt on Austin Avenue
Painted by Mick Burson, 2014 · commissioned by Andy Anzollitto of Deuxtone · signed MICK at the wall’s right end · listed by Creative Waco as “Abstract Mural”MURAL
A wall in a parking lot painted to look like somebody’s grandmother quilted it at architectural scale.
From across the parking lot it looks like somebody’s grandmother made it: patches of rose, mint, cream and brick-red fitted together edge to edge, a quilt at architectural scale. Walk up to it and the trick starts working on you. Is this one designed mural, or a century of paint jobs, sign layers and patch repairs that weathered into accidental harmony? We stood in that lot longer than we’d like to admit arguing about it.
It’s a mural. Mick Burson painted it in 2014 for Andy Anzollitto of Deuxtone, and at the far right end you’ll find MICK signed into the paint. What makes it good is that knowing doesn’t spoil it — Burson painted the look of accumulated time. Patches that seem to answer to old window openings and vanished rooflines. Seams that follow the brick courses for a while and then stop bothering. It is a hundred years of Austin Avenue, composed on purpose.
Notice too that the wall is its own building. It stands low and alone at the edge of the lot, a remnant of something that came down — which is why the taller brick building behind it, with the gold letters along its roofline, is a separate stop on this trail. So are the two painted roll-up doors in the alley past it. Three buildings, three painters, one very well-decorated block.
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