A secret code in suds – Unraveling the hidden message at North Coast Brewery
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Hey – Call the police!! Somebody put graffiti all over the side of North Coast Brewery !!!
Right where the new amazing whale mural will soon be.
Who dun’ it?
It was Marta Alonso Canillar, the mural artist.
A man drove by on Friday just before Mendocinocoast.news arrived. He told her he was disappointed she was scribbling random weird graffiti all over. He hoped to see the whale emerging.
“That was wonderful. It means art is doing what is supposed to and is triggering a passionate reaction,”
Marta told me, as we laughed about it.
And also CORRECTION SIR!
It’s not scribbling it’s DOODLING. And it’s not random by any means. It’s a new way of doing murals so that the image can match the artist’s vision exactly. This is difficult with a 57-foot-long canvas that is the north wall of the North Coast Brewing factory building.
(Please don’t argue with Mendocinoocoast.news about the true size of that wall anymore please. We just measured it with Marta using an accurate tape measure). In the past, a grid like graph paper would have been drawn on the wall, not very interesting to look at, Marta said. Or, a projector would have been used to use regular and ultraviolet light to show how to match the mural to the mockup, which is the painting by Fort Bragg artist Larry Foster, world famous for painting gray whales as they really look. He is world-renowned among both whale scientists and the whale art community for having changed how whales are drawn and seen.
So the man who made the world see whales as more than blobs and sea monsters will have the biggest (of course it’s the biggest, it’s a whale!) mural in town. And the mural is being made with the latest, state-of-the-art painting method, which looks like graffiti. Doodle art explained in video
Mendocinocoast.news was the first (and possibly only?) site to tell readers about the whale mural.
This is called the Doodle Grid or the Lazy Grid. This method is not Lazy at all, it has to be as exact as the old graph method would have been. But here, it’s easy for an artist to copy words from a paper onto the wall. Then she can look at the mockup and match the whale painting to the “graffiti” or doodles. The doodle sends a message. But you will have to get there quickly to read it. She is back on Monday to continue the mural.
Mendocinocoast. news will be photographing the emerging mural weekly and telling more stories about the art, the artists, whales and more.
While Marta and I were talking, Deb DeGraw joined us and offered to send over some links about the origins of the doodle grid. She’s also planning to share a few fascinating resources on North Coast Brewery history – especially the artistic side of things. Deb DeGraw is now the public face of North Coast Brewery, stepping into the spotlight after founder Mark Ruedrich retired and longtime brewmaster Patrick Broderick moved on. After decades at North Coast Patrick launched Tall Guy Tap Room just three blocks up Franklin Street – a new chapter in Mendocino’s brewing story.
Readers may remember that Frank Hartzell broke the story about Tall Guy and the relatively new concept of a tap room, where the beer was all made on site and fresh and never sold bottled. Here is Frank’s story from the Mendocino Voice
Since that story broke, Patrick has turned Tall Guy Tap Room into one of the premier entertainment venues on the Mendocino Coast.
Other big Hops at North Coast include the actual boss, Jennifer Owen and Chuck Martins, who went from co-master brewer to now being what some say is the best job on the Coast, being the master brewer at North Coast.
We’d imagine that Chuck,ever the diligent worker, has to test each new batch to be sure it’s right! Of course we can’t say for certain that he does – but if we were in his shoes, we definitely would.
Debra also answered our questions about what the whale art is that is already high up on this same wall. We felt a bit foolish when Frank didn’t even notice the whale and neither Frank nor Marta was for sure what it was.
Deb confirmed that yes, it was the label from one of the beers. We will leave it to our readers to figure out which one and post it here.
Fan of the emerging mural?
Subscribe for free to Mendocinocoast.news. Some updates will be exclusive to subscribers. North Coast has a Gala in the works for October. Will the mural be done in time ? We’re not sure … but if you’re subscribed you’ll be the first to know.
