If you’ve recently driven past Old National Bank’s building at the corner of Fourth and Sycamore streets, you’ve likely noticed a bright and bold new mural livening up the Downtown Evansville landscape.
Often Seen Rarely Spoken, a mural collective based in Louisville, Kentucky, was selected for the project commissioned by ONB for its building at 101 N.W Fourth St. that houses various ONB departments such as information technology and loan and mortgage operations.
The historic building at Fourth and Sycamore was formerly the first freestanding Sears store in the nation. Old National Bank renovated the building in 1992 and has been there ever since.
The mural features two Evansville icons: the P-47 Thunderbolt “Hoosier Spirit” and LST-325. Its blue and gold color scheme matches ONB’s branding.
Painted in the lower right of the mural is the word “Evansville” in large, bulging letters. Jeremy L., one of five artists with Often Seen Rarely Spoken, says the letters were created in virtual reality, a new technique of designing digitally.
“The way that you see those letters looking so dimensional as if they’re coming out of the wall, that’s because we were literally able to get into the program and push and pull these letters to make them come forward or go backward,” he says. “That’s how we give it such a dimensional look, just because of the programs we design in.”
The mural took eight days to complete, though the entire planning and preparation process lasted about six months. The collective used around 50 gallons of paint and more than 100 cans of spray paint across the large wall, which spans nearly 8,000 square feet.
This was Often Seen Rarely Spoken’s first of two projects in Evansville: The group recently completed a mural on the northwest corner of the newly renovated ONB Hub at 123 Main St. The image is similar to the Fourth Street wall but has a few different elements.
Though the collective is based out of Louisville, it also has a studio in Cincinnati, Ohio, and has traveled across the country for work, completing projects in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Asheville, North Carolina.
