Downtown Tulsa

Downtown Tulsa will soon be home to the world’s largest augmented reality mural, as the exterior wall above the Main Park Plaza parking garage storefronts becomes the canvas for thousands of square feet of art.

The artwork, titled “The Majestic,” will span the north and east sides of the building located at 410 S. Main St. Artists Ryan “Yanoe” Sarfati and Eric “Zoueh” Skotnes — who have created murals in New Zealand, Los Angeles, Switzerland, and elsewhere — designed and will paint the piece.

“It’s definitely an ode to Tulsa,” Sarfati said Tuesday. “It’s a collaboration of our styles and what we experienced in our visits to Tulsa. We visited Tulsa before we even came up with the idea, so it’s a lot of flora and fauna that are all derived from Tulsa.”

The mural will feature scissortail flycatchers, flathead catfish, eastern redbuds, swallowtail butterflies and more, according to a press release from the city of Tulsa.

The mural’s design was also inspired by its location in the Deco District, Sarfati said. Other elements of the mural outside the animals and plants will reflect the art deco construction of some of the city’s prominent buildings.

“We’ll have art deco-inspired frames on each side of the wall,” Skotnes said. “It’s kind of a window into this ethereal dream world of native Tulsan elements, and in the center we’ll have an art deco sculpture of an angel holding two babies, which depicts nurturing Tulsa’s youth and uplifting them.”

The 15,000-square-foot mural should be completed by late July, Sarfati said, with finalization of augmented reality elements expected to take roughly an additional month and a half to complete.

Sarfati said the augmented reality portion of the mural will “bring to life” the flora and fauna of the mural, animating the artwork and providing audio when viewed through a phone camera and providing more information on the nature it depicts. The mural will also be accompanied by plaques with similar information.

Once completed, the work will be the largest augmented reality mural in the world, overtaking Columbus, Ohio’s “The Journey,” also created by Skotnes and Sarfati.

The art was commissioned by the Tulsa Parking Authority through a public request for proposals, according to the city press release. Discussions on enhancing the storefront area began around two years ago, Downtown Coordinating Council Executive Director Brian Kurtz said.

“We ended up investing about $1.2 million in new awnings, storefront systems for all of the businesses around the parking garage, (but) we still weren’t quite sure what to do with the blank four stories of upper walls that was fronting Main Street,” Kurtz said. “We decided to work with the Tulsa Arts Commission … the ultimate goal is to enliven that part of downtown for businesses that are desiring foot traffic, and anything we could do to brighten up the blank walls and create a bit more vibrancy in that area.”

- Tulsa World