Moorestown High alumnus Sean Allen recently created his biggest and most complex mural to date for Stellar Athletics, a wellness-focused facility co-owned by fellow alumni Mike Weaver and Shane Brennan.
Moorestown High School alumni Mike Weaver and Shane Brennan recently collaborated with fellow alum and artist Sean Allen on a special project for Stellar Athletics, a wellness-focused facility co-owned by Weaver and Brennan.
“You don’t often get the chance to work with a customer who has great ideas that excite you as an artist and vibe with the style of what you already like to create,” Allen said, “so this was certainly one of those instances where we (Allen, Weaver and Brennan) just clicked immediately, and the subject matter of what they were going for was right up my alley.”
Allen gave himself 10 days to bring the project – his biggest and most complex mural yet – to life at Stellar Athletics. He worked on it for eight to 10 hours a day, but before that, Allen, Weaver and Brennan tossed ideas around for what the mural could look like, and everything fell into place quickly.
Now complete, the mural is a large, eye-popping piece of artwork that bodes well with the theme of Stellar Athletics.
“It’s been completely worth it, just the mural and the effect,” Brennan observed, “and it allows Stellar (Athletics) to have that big of an expression … It does matter about who we are. It feels good to be expressive, and Sean has allowed us to do that. It’s unbelievable.
“Every single day we walk into that space and we’re like, ‘This is sick.’”
“I still can’t believe how it came together, for sure,” Weaver recounted. “The operation was so smooth, too. We really did work together really well, and I think that is in part for a few reasons, but … we were all very much so on the same page ….
“The final product, there was more depth to it,” he added. “There was more creativity that he (Allen) had put on it that wasn’t even on the rendering of it … As far as an artistic piece and that type of creativity, it’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever been a part of, for sure.”
Allen’s piece, he explained, shows a lot of movement, with the galaxy or the nebula or the ring of Saturn – all combined into one – swooping from left to right toward a mural visitor.
“ … Then you have space men and women riddled throughout on their own little meteor rocks,” Allen noted, and flying asteroids around that ring or nebula, and they’re doing fitness movements where one’s running, one is swinging the kettlebell, one is in a lotus pose …
“Trying to combine the fitness aspect with the brand of Stellar Athletics, it’s certainly a space theme, an out-of-this world theme.”
Motivational phrases and sayings are embedded in the mural’s background with Allen’s classic graffiti letters. From his perspective, the bottom, right side of the mural is the main part of the piece, one that came directly from Weaver and Brennan’s ideas of what they were looking for.
“ … They gave me all of these cool, far-out concepts that mix well with space,” Allen recalled, “so at the very bottom right of it, you have these two, large figures (a space chimp and a space lion) that are probably 10 feet tall when you’re up close to them, and it’s probably the most detailed part of the piece.
“So I enjoyed creating that part and spending time on that part because I feel like it is the most eye-catching (part) of the entire piece.”
Allen followed a creative process to make the mural, as he does with all his work. He started out with big graffiti letters that had drips and splatters, followed by paint rollers to create the movement of the galaxy. Because the mural is so big, that process, he said, was a trying time both mentally and physically. But once he got those elements in place, he used spray paint and paint brushes for the more refined detail.
“It starts from the least control you have over your utensil or your medium, and then it gets more detailed and more controlled as the layers progress,” Allen pointed out. “ … When you finally step back from the wall, it’s this euphoric feeling where I’ve just gone through maybe 100 hours of work … It’s almost like you have this break where it’s hard to think of myself as the person who created this, in a way. I step back and look at the work like it’s its own thing and that I’m not really related to it at all.
“It’s a strange feeling,” he added. “It’s hard to describe, but it’s certainly a great feeling. It’s like a huge, deep breath, a sigh of relief and an excitement at the end, when you finally look at that initial sketch and then you look up and the mural is completed on the wall and it’s larger than life, and it’s the biggest thing you’ve ever created.”
