About the Mural

Sewing Seeds

This richly-colored image in jewel tones of crimson, orange, purple, aqua and royal blue resonates along the wall at 1720 Central Avenue.

90 feet long by 15 feet tall, this work by Jamaican artist Taj Tenfold faces west. The background is white, with a surging sea of textured waves covering the bottom third.

A woman’s face and shoulders rise from this surging sea, just to the right of center. Her image is huge – the top of her hair is cut off by the roof. Her face is swirled in curves of aqua and rich blue, and highlighted in glowing orange, as if the Sun is setting on the right side of the mural, throwing light onto the her neck and her right cheek.

Her sensuous, deep red lips are sparked by the Sun, the left half of her face in blue shadows.

Her shoulders rise above the water, in a silky orange shirt with a collar, glinting with light. Her long dreadlocks are rich purple, coiled atop her head and wrapped in an orange scarf with folds that shift from dark to pale in the setting sunlight. Several of her braids escape the scarf and dangle, dripping with magenta. One long coil of hair falls past her shoulder, on the left, moving from purple to fuschia, and ending in magenta. A wooden spool is threaded through it, level with her lips.

The woman’s hands rise above the water. Her palms are aqua swirled with blue, like her face. Just the tips of several fingers echo the true color of her skin. The red light of the Sun highlights the right sides of the hand on the right, and two fingers on the left. The aqua on both her hands glints with setting sunlight.

The woman’s expression is thoughtful, focused on her right hand. Facing us, her hand is on the left side of the mural, holding a long gold needle that’s she’s threading with rippling blue thread, that’s held taut by her other hand.

The title of the mural is Sewing Seeds – with “sewing” spelled like sewing cloth. Taj Tenfold explains that the thread she’s sewing with is made of water – she’s repairing damage to the ocean, and sea rise.

The mural is throbbing with color – undulating curves of blue flow across her face, her purple and magenta hair is coiled in the rippling orange scarf. The red of her lips echoes the sunset highlights on her upraised hands. The surging blue ocean surrounds her.

Pulsing strips of color surge and arc across the wall, energetic curves and spots of purple, gold, of red and orange. And connecting her hands as they carefully sew, bold abstract curves that move from aqua to blue, magenta and orange to rich, deep red, rise past her eyes, diving in and out of the water.

On the opposite side of this building is a lovely mural of a multicolored woman, arms outstretched in the rain, by Dasic Fernandez.