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Feb 21, 2024

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It was Day 52 and Tiffany Brooks was a little loopy. Lowering herself to the parking lot from the hydraulic lift from which she’s painting the largest mural in Riverside, she greeted me and erupted in

It was Day 52 and Tiffany Brooks was a little loopy. Lowering herself to the parking lot from the hydraulic lift from which she’s painting the largest mural in Riverside, she greeted me and erupted in conversation.

For the mural’s image of the 1890 Loring Building, she’d been adding ruffles to the window awnings. “They make me so happy!” she exclaimed. From her bag she pulled a copy of a 1929 photo of the building to show me the ruffles were authentic to the period.

And she reflected proudly on teaching herself to operate a hydraulic lift, a modern version of the scaffolding that a Renaissance artist, who would of course have been a man, would have used.

“I always see men on these huge lifts,” Brooks said. “I think it’s so cool that a chick…” She trailed off, then started again.

“Women have been taught to be intimidated. It seems like construction. And now,” she exulted, in her slightly raspy voice, “a girl is doing the biggest mural in Riverside!”

For artist Tiffany Brooks, taking on such a large mural, and under a tight deadline, was daunting. Now, she says, “to see it come to fruition is such a great joy.” (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

Tiffany Brooks paints from a perch 50 feet up in a hydraulic boom lift Aug. 23 in downtown Riverside. Her sprawling mural, the city’s largest, nears completion. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

From her perch in a hydraulic lift, Tiffany Brooks paints her downtown Riverside mural in the late afternoon sun Aug. 14. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

The mural “Historic Riverside” nears completion Aug. 23 on the back of the Loring Building downtown. Painted by Tiffany Brooks, the mural off Mission Inn Avenue is the largest in the city at 40 feet tall and 110 feet wide. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

Her mural is going up (and up) along the blank west side of the four-story Loring Building, along Mission Inn Avenue a half-block east of Market Street. When Brooks and I had spoken Aug. 3, she was working six days a week, racing against a deadline to return the boom lift.

Since then, with the deadline growing nearer and with so much left to do, she’d been working seven days a week.

“I haven’t had a day off in 21 days,” Brooks admitted, apologizing for sounding scattered. “I’m to that point where I’m delirious and panicked and excited all at the same time.”

Can we say the muralist hit the proverbial wall?

For conversation and a better view, we adjourned to the third-story community room of The Mark, the new apartment tower immediately west of the mural. (I wrote about The Mark in February. Every column of mine is connected.)

From there we could get an overall look at the mural, while also enjoying air conditioning. Brooks gazed out the bank of windows at her handiwork.

“I see all the things I want to change,” Brooks said with a sigh, “but it’s too late at this point.” One of her favorite sayings is this: “Art is never finished, it’s abandoned.”

“Historic Riverside,” as the mural is titled, is a triptych of postcard-like images of the Loring Building, the Mission Inn and the Fox Theater, which all rise within a couple of blocks of each other.

The mural had been conceived by another artist who had to back out from producing it. The commission is from Beautify Riverside, a privately funded initiative of Mayor Patricia Lock Dawson’s.

Brooks started in June when only a large magnolia was painted.

“At first when I got this job, I thought I was crazy, and now I know I’m crazy,” Brooks said with a laugh. “But now I’m happy I did it, because this gives me so much joy.”

She’d been working from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. every day but Saturday, with a break for lunch and rest. In August she added Sunday, making for a seven-day schedule, while giving herself a break now and then for extracurricular activities.

I asked about last weekend’s storm. I hoped she wasn’t up on the lift, painting in the rain.

“Saturday it was getting kind of funky, but I was here most of the day, until 2 p.m.,” Brooks said. In a rare break, she went to L.A. with friends for a show.

With steady rain on Sunday, she stayed home but kept working: finishing the plaques for the wall, lining up a “cement guy” to prep the area for the plaques and planning out a grid of how to repaint the magnolia, the only portion she hadn’t painted herself, because she felt it was too small.

At 6:15 a.m. Monday, she was back on the job in the drizzle.

“I’ve got 500 hours into this thing,” she said Wednesday, estimating that based on what she’s being paid, she was earning $7 an hour. But the challenge was irresistible. Plus there’s all that joy.

On Tuesday she highlighted the left side of the Loring Building, added a shadow, added the sky, worked more on the magnolia and oversaw the cement placement on the stucco surface for two plaques. It was a 10-hour day.

On Wednesday morning she added the awning fringe. She planned to spend the afternoon placing highlights and shadows on the Loring moldings, adding business names to its office windows and elaborating on the palm tree, of which she’s particularly proud. But it would be a shorter day than some.

“I’m leaving early tonight,” Brooks said. “It’s prime rib night at the Victoria Club.”

On Thursday, she would finish the magnolia and add shadows to the last half of the word “Riverside” in the banner reading “Historic Riverside.”

There’s an attention to detail, obviously, even more than is recounted above. A lot of little touches will go unnoticed by nearly everyone but have personal meaning for her. She painted her cat into an upper-story window of the Loring, for instance, and her daughter, with her dog, into an archway of the Mission Inn.

From The Mark, she could see the big picture. And big it is.

“Every challenge that could be thrown at me was,” she said. “Even a hurricane!”

Thursday was Day 53. She worked from 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., with only a 90-minute break. This was her last official day of work, because Friday she had a flight to catch.

Her flight, however, wasn’t until 11 a.m. Why rush? So she worked on the mural from 6 to 8:30 a.m., then went home to change clothes and bolt for the airport.

A few things remain to be done, including her signature panel, but they are near enough to the ground that she can paint them from a ladder after the boom lift is returned to the rental company.

A ceremony to mark the mural’s completion is currently planned for 6 p.m. Sept. 23.

I’m imagining it’ll be 6:05, with the mayor and everyone standing around awkwardly, as Brooks from the top of a ladder calls down, “Just give me five more minutes, I have to fix something.”

David Allen, an imperfectionist, writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Email [email protected], phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.

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