GB Tran is an art director, graphic designer and illustrator who recently painted his first mural on the outside wall of BiGA Farm to Table Restaurant, 623 Miller Valley Road, Prescott. Tran creates work for eclectic clients, from multi-billion dollar global companies to small neighborhood businesses. He is also a teacher at San Francisco’s California College of the Arts.

Tran spoke with Across the Street about his mural. The following interview was edited for length and clarity.

What made you want

to paint a mural on

the wall of BiGA?

I’ve never done a mural before. I’ve done a lot of other things — small scale, like clothing design, clothing illustration, advertising — working in a lot of different creative industries and, you know, the opportunity came up. This is a really wonderful restaurant. It’s my wife’s and my favorite restaurant, you know, a nice little farm-to-table, small restaurant.

What was here before was a giant brown wall. It was just random, we ate here one time and I just reached out and was like, “Hey, have you ever considered putting a mural on your wall?” I didn’t know what would happen because at that point we’d never even really had a conversation with Kasey and John, the owners.

But Kasey responded a few days later and she’s like, “You know something? We have always thought about putting some artwork on the wall exterior.” I’m like, “Great, let’s talk.” That was back in October and it’s been a long process, mainly because of the weather.

What was your

inspiration for the design?

With all my clients, the first thing I do is meet and have a conversation about what their vision is, what their idea is. We go on the internet, we look at some imagery, see what they’re feeling, what they’re not feeling, and stuff like that. And they really, really leaned into the fresh, modern local. That’s the tagline. For me, it was just coming up with artwork that I felt kind of captured that.

So, for this piece, the fresh is the content — produce, vegetables. Not just that, but the colors, are just really bright, super-saturated, very eye-catching. So, that was my interpretation of the fresh. Modern, for me, was basically the aesthetic or the style, the illustration. The figures aren’t super, super rendered, or super realistic. Nothing has a lot of shading or value or light sourcing. It’s just it’s all very graphic, very bold, which I feel has more of a modern aesthetic to it, illustration-wise. The last word in there, local is all about farm-to-table. So, the local is represented by the figures. From the right side, the farmers picking, handling, growing and then moving to the left, bringing in the groceries and then people working in the kitchen and cooking. All the way to the far left where you have a server and then a diner.

For more information about GB Tran’s work, visit gbtran.com.

Jesse Bertel is a reporter/videographer for the Prescott News Network. Follow him on Twitter @ JesseBertel, email him at jbertel@prescottaz.com, or call 928-445-3333, ext. 2043.