“And they absolutely loved it. They loved being able to get into something that was professional, for starters, and having another viewpoint of art other than tagging, and that was the point we wanted to make.”
Kalib has worked with rangatahi before and says he had 20-30 kids come through and help.
“It was awesome being a part of that with the young ones and everyone who was involved,” he says.
Often those who came along to help were initially reluctant, saying they didn’t want to “muck it up”.
“But after, say, half an hour, we couldn’t get them off the spray cans - they couldn’t get enough of it.
“Creativity is in everyone, and sometimes you need to take a practical approach to bring it out of people.”
The mural depicts the Kaituna River flowing between the Rangiuru and Otawa mountains.
Kalib, who has been a professional artist for 15 years and operates under the name Aerosol World - says creating the mural on the wall required some trial and error.
“There are a lot of downpipes and different things sticking out of the wall, so it was a challenge. I’ve dealt with similar challenges, but not quite as challenging as that, and not as high.”
The initial design was scoped out on the wall and painted with exterior paint, then aerosols were used to fade the foundation colours.
Ripeka says there has been a tremendous response to the mural.
“We’ve had a lot of comments from the Te Puke Community [Facebook] page and lots of comments on Instagram - we’ve had about 8000 likes and comments,” says Ripeka.
