Over a year ago, Bungalower teamed up with our friends at Ivanhoe Park Brewing Company (Facebook | Website) in Ivanhoe Village to launch a limited edition Arnold Palmer-inspired beer called a “Bungalower Lemonade.” The local brewery donated $1 of every beer to our newsroom to fund a public art piece.

ORIGINAL “CELESTIAL APES” DESIGN BY SCHIANI LEDO

We used those funds to get the ball rolling with local artist Schiani Ledo (Instagram), to create a unique three-dimensional mural that would be showcased in the Mills 50 District which he calls “Celestial Apes.” Ledo was inspired to create the piece by a lyric in the song “Kalopsia” by Queens of the Stone Age where they sing, “Why are you so sad, what have they done? Forget those mindless baboons, they’re off playing God.” We were lucky enough to tour Ledo’s studio in April at the beginning of the pandemic for a quick Facebook Live tour of his progress which you can see HERE.

Julio Lima, owner of award-winning creative agency Say It Loud! (Facebook | Website), donated funds and the exterior wall of his Orange Studio (Facebook) building at 1121 N. Mills Avenue [GMap] to showcase the piece because he loves art, supporting artists, and cheering on community projects.

Ledo’s day job happens to be Senior Designer for Highforge Solutions (Facebook | Website), and his very giving and community-engaged boss, Scott Man, agreed to offset any hours needed to create the piece by building it into Ledo’s hours at work during the quarantine.

We purchased the aluminum base from Orlando-based FX Design Group (Website) which cut us a great deal and rendered the design for the mounting hardware which was needed to submit to the City of Orlando. Any three-dimensional piece that is to be affixed to the surface of a building, artistic in nature or not, is treated as a sign and the City of Orlando worked with us to make the months-long permitting process as easy as possible.

RENDERING BY FX DESIGN GROUP

The team at White Sign Company (Facebook | Website) volunteered to work with us on the installation of the piece and signed on as the qualified contractors required by the City of Orlando to install it properly on the side of the building.

We are so grateful to our community partners and our beer-drinking Bungalower Buddy supporters who supported this project and we look forward to bringing even more public art to The City Beautiful in the near future.

Leave a comment

Have something to say? Type it below. Holding back can give you pimples.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.