About the Mural

The cheery crowd of pastel flowers at 1810 Dr Martin Luther King Junior Street South is part of the CLEAN Project, organized by the national nonprofit called Current Initiatives, who paint vibrant murals on laundromats around the country.

Cory Robinson created this gentle garden of pastel pink and yellow, teal and purple flowers – 32 feet wide and 18 feet high. It’s on the north-facing wall of the laundromat at this busy intersection.

The flowers are drawn like a cartoon or a children’s book, a continuous cloud of fat blossoms with rounded petals and a small white circle in the center. This soft wall of pastel blooms is punctuated by pointy star-like flowers with long, separated petals.

Every inch of the wall is covered with flowers, all the way up to the peaked roofline –except for a fat grey cartoon cat, floating in the flowers on the lower right. His front paws and huge round head with tiny ears are all that’s poking through the flowers, sleepy eyes at half-mast and a satisfied smirk like he’s found the best place for a nap.

The mural is painted around a wooden fence a little left of center – the fence shelters the utilities for the laundromat. But the pipes that poke out of the wall and snake through the fence are bright blue. And two ventilation grilles just under the triangle of the roof are painted to blend in. The left grille’s painted blue and the right one’s pink, with a wavy purple flower sprawling over its right edge.

Cory Robinson is based in Philadelphia but has lived in Tampa. He says his artwork brings a smile and puts people in a better mood. He loves old architecture and is known for painting in reverse on old discarded windows.

This wall bore a red, gold and green CLEAN Project mural for SHINE 2016, created by Tampa artists Pep Rally. But the wall was painted over when the property changed hands. Now Cory Robinson has cheered things up again, painting this gentle mural entirely by brush.