Bold and big: Downtown’s 27th mural begins to come into form

HARLINGEN — Even big walls can’t stand up to the proper inspiration.

The mural being painted at 305 W. Van Buren Ave., 120 feet long by 15 feet high, is slowly taking shape in bold hues of red, magenta, pink and orange.

There’s no mistake, these colors are meant to inspire.

“I love bright colors and positive feelings, so that’s what I go for in everything that I do, it’s bright and inspirational and experimental,” artist Tammy Corbette Lopez said on Good Friday morning as she worked on the mural.

“In life we’re just learning every day, every day.”

Corbette is originally from Raymondville, yet her roundabout artistic career has taken her across the country, she says, to San Antonio and Houston and on to study graphic design in California and Las Vegas.

“You get caught up in just living and I just did that for a while, just lived,” the 37-year-old artist said. “And then I realized ‘oh, you know, I’ve got this talent, I love art, doing graphic, let me pursue it a little further,’ and I checked out the art institute in Vegas.”

She said she has a friend who lives there.

“So I went to go live with her and went back to school and met a lot of really cool people who inspired me in school and out of school in the scene of Vegas, and was really involved in a lot of the night life with the art out there, doing shows from place to place,” she said.

The mural on the wall on West Van Buren will be titled “Live to Inspire,” and when finished in a few weeks, it will be the 27th mural in the downtown district.

“Here it’s about inspiring people,” Corbette said. “It’s for the people, by the people, and I feel very blessed to have a lot of people who are in my life who have inspired me throughout my journey. And that’s just what I want to give back, to live to inspire, and living and breathing and taking every day like it’s precious.”

Corbette concedes that what amounts to a vast canvas on the side of this building in downtown Harlingen has put her outside her comfort zone.

“I’ve done small ones for businesses in Las Vegas, but nothing like this, especially with a message that’s dear to me, too,” she said. “I’ve never done something this massive, no.

“It’s pretty big and it’s challenging with having to balance life and trying to finish this as well and doing other projects,” Corbette said. “I’m doing one in Brownsville, too, but it’s been interesting to learning how to mix colors and doing straight lines and even where to begin and everybody wanting to be part of it and wanting to be here to support and help out.”

Corbette said she has been reminded how breezy the Valley can be in springtime, and at first had concerns about how it might affect her work.

“That’s a thing, too,” she said. “What worried me for the first day when I went to make the lines it was super windy those couple of days, and I was like ‘oh, my,’ and I was getting a little panicked, like I’m going to be on this tall ladder, I hope I don’t fall. But then I just meditated and prayed and came out and everything was fine.”

Not just fine, but even inspirational.