Over a year has passed since local artist/muralist Juan Velazquez went viral after painting the iconic 2016 fight between the Rangers’ Rougned Odor and the Blue Jays’ Jose Bautista on the wall of Gilberto’s Taco Shop in Arlington. The sight of one of his latest murals, which will be unveiled next week, is the very spot where he got his start; the Artes de La Rosa Cultural Center for the Arts at 1440 N. Main St. This soon-to-be-unveiled work is being painted in honor of the upcoming Major League Baseball All-Star game being played on July 16 at Globe Life Field. What a get, Texas!
Today, Velazquez is in high demand, working on murals throughout the metroplex. But no matter how far he’s come, Velazquez always stays true to his roots. In fact, this veteran and die-hard Texas Rangers fan grew up on the north side, painting his first mural in the area when he was a virtual unknown.
Now that he’s made a name for himself, Velazquez is giving back to the community. He will be one of three instructors at a three-day event surrounding the All-Star Game, teaching 50 children how to paint the Texas Rangers Logo.
In anticipation of the unveiling of Velazquez’s baseball-themed mural next week, we caught up with him to ask a few questions about his inspiration behind the piece.
FWM: I just wanted to touch base with you on the new baseball-themed mural. How’s it coming along and what was the idea behind the art?
JV: It's supposed to be a mural that will make kids dream big, something that kind of motivates them. If you can dream it, you can do it type of thing. And it's going to be a mural that kind of shows different stages of t-ball, middle school, high school, and college ball. It's like a transition going to the end of playing pro. So, it's a mural that's going to have this kid that's in the middle of it kind of dreaming type of thing, sitting in a bench and around them is going to be all different stages of baseball. And at the top, I'm going to be putting some stars, some baseball stars like [Ivan] ‘Pudge’ Rodriguez, and it's supposed to just motivate kids to get fired up about baseball.
FWM: Did the Texas Rangers come to you with this project?
JV: Yeah. I don't even know how they found me, but they found a wall by this nonprofit in Fort Worth, and I happened to be a teacher there, so I think my name was thrown in already. I usually work on this mural at the end of the day because of the way the sun sets on that wall. If I paint after 4:00 p.m., I'm not painting in the sun. I'm kind of in the shade and just due to the weather, it got really hot out of nowhere. Honestly, if I just worked on it nonstop for three days, I could finish it, but because of the heat, I have kind of been working on it like three hours here, four hours here, three hours here, just because I'm working alone, and I don't want to pass out by myself.
FWM: How busy are you nowadays Juan? I mean ever since the Rougned Odor mural; I’ve seen you popping up everywhere on social media.
JV: Last year I did a lot of traveling. I did a lot of painting out of town. There's a lot of stuff that I have not posted, but I've been super busy. I painted so much stuff, that I kind of started painting with a group of friends because if you're going to do an out-of-town mural, it could take you a week to do it by yourself. But if you do it with a group of two or three people, you could do it in two days. We started tackling out-of-town projects together. And even though they're my projects and I kind of do 'em, I don't post 'em because I feel like it's kind of a mixture of different people's art and some of them are kind of just work. It's like a corporation. They want something that is not necessarily artistic stuff; it's business. And I don't post a lot of that. Some of it is logos, and stuff like that. But it's been good. I painted a mural this week that I didn't even post.
FWM: Is this your busy season?
JV: I always get busier when it's hot. I don't know why, but even me and our friends have talked about it when it's 60 degrees outside, we're out here like, ‘Hey, does anybody want a mural 20% off?’ And then everybody’s like, ‘eh, nah.’ But the moment it gets over a hundred degrees, people are like, ‘I want a mural now. I'll pay extra and I want it tomorrow.’ We're definitely in mural season right now.
FWM: Is baseball your favorite sport?
JV: I don't really have a favorite sport, but I love baseball. I wasn't born in this country. I came here when I was very little and now I’m a United States citizen. But I remember the first time I went to a major league game, a professional sports game. It was a baseball game. I went to see the Astros in Houston. You see a lot of depictions of what America is in movies, and I think that that's one of the first times where my idea of what it was and what I was experiencing matched up in my head. Because baseball is a very American thing. People still get up for the national anthem, even though people feel differently about it. I, for one, am grateful for it. And I love baseball.
