Shaunt’e Lewis lent a hand in the Jiffy Lube’s first digital mural.
The Fishers resident served as an apprentice to Artur Silva on the project featuring hands.
“With all the attention brought to our hands with the hand washing and distancing ourselves, it made us bring more awareness to our hands, and how we use our hands for touching, showing emotion, shaking hands, cleaning, playing,” Lewis said. “I don’t think we thought about it as much as we did this year with the COVID.”
The digital mural is part of Jiffy Lube of Indiana’s statewide “Every Part Matters” public art project and is on the Westfield Jiffy Lube at 840 E 151st St.
“It’s amazing to see how it makes the side of the building pop,” Lewis said. “Bringing my family to see it or other people sending me pictures of it makes me feel good that I’m contributing my artwork to the world. I love hearing what everyone has to say about it.”
Lewis said she and Silva, who splits time between living in Indianapolis and South Bend, worked individually on illustrations on the project. They exchanged emails on the drawings. She estimated the process took three weeks.
“Artur took different hand pictures and then he illustrated them,” Lewis said. “He gave me the concept and I made my own hand illustrations. We emailed back and forth.”
Silva used black and white images and Lewis used color images.
“He put them together, Photoshopped and made a composition and then emailed them to the company to do the printing,” Lewis said. “The printer actually hung the vinyl mural.”
Lewis said it was Silva’s concept and she incorporated some of the things like the baby hands and the heart.
“January is when I’m taking my full-time leap into full-time art,” said Lewis, a hair stylist. “My specialities are digital illustrations. I focus a lot on portraits of the female figure, so it’s digital, painting on canvas and murals.”
