If you’ve ever done a double-take at a colorful roll-off dumpster on a Dallas highway, that might be mine!

In early 2023, I was selected by the City of Dallas Office of Arts & Culture and Dallas Code Compliance for their Murals on the Move: Paint with Me! project. The concept: transform a 22-foot roll-off container into a traveling work of public art for community clean-up events around the city. Flattened out, it’s a 60-foot mural. I started May 16, 2023 and finished by end of June, with delays for rain and some business travel I already had planned.

The Concept: White Rock Lake Meets Monarch Butterfly Migration

I’ve volunteered many times at White Rock Lake cleanup events through @fortheloveofthelake, and I regularly walk my dog at Winfrey Point, where the sunsets are some of the best downtown views in the city. That sense of community showing up for something beautiful felt like the right foundation.

The other thread is the Monarch butterfly. I started a pollinator garden in 2016 and was thrilled when it finally attracted Monarchs. They’ve been in my artwork ever since as a reminder that Dallas sits on the migration path, and that what we do in our neighborhoods matters for these endangered insects.

Two Sides, One Story

Side 1 (Butterflies): One side served as a painting template for a planned community “Paint with Me” event at the Oak Cliff Cultural Center. (It was cancelled due to weather, which felt fitting given how much rain also delayed the painting itself.) The design puts you on your back looking up at a sky full of Monarchs at every scale, filling a warm gradient sky.

Side 2 (The Lake Scene): The other long side shows a colorful sunset over White Rock Lake at Winfrey Point, with silhouettes of trees, a sailboat, and people on benches. The mission statement “Safeguarding & Supporting a Strong, Healthy CommUNITY” runs across the foreground with community scenes woven into the letterforms.

The End Panels: Colors from both long sides wraps around to meet at the ends, with butterflies drifting through to tie it all together.

 

My Mural Painting Supplies

This post contains affiliate links. That means I receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you make a purchase after clicking the link.

My primary paint was Behr Premium Plus Exterior flat finish, applied with a Graco Magnum Project Painter Plus airless sprayer for base coat areas and this HVLP automotive spray gun powered by a California Airtools 8-gal compressor for smaller areas, the butterfly stencils, and for the final topcoat. Since I was on-location, the compressor was plugged into a generator provided by the City of Dallas team.

Finer details were done with a few different tools:

• • For the black linework on the butterlifes, I used Montana Cans paint markers and paint brushes like the Liquitex 1″ paddle brush
  • For filling in the letters, I used a roller and paintbrushes. I get many of my rollers and brushes locally at Harbor Freight, but these online options for small paint rollers are pretty similar.
  • For the subtle details and shading, I enjoyed using this Master airbrush with a removable cup as it made cleaning much easier. The larger cup also allowed me to hold much more paint than my usual airbrushes while still giving me the fine detail nozzle.

  
  The finished mural is sealed with VandlGuard graffiti-resistant topcoat using the HVLP spray gun.

  Since I was working in a field, I opted for the doodle grid method to transfer my design from paper to the dumpster.

  You can see many of these products in action in my Youtube video.

  Where is the dumpster now?

  The container is still in active use at Dallas Code Compliance Community Trash-Off events at rec centers around the city on select Saturdays, where residents can drop off batteries, paint, electronics, and other hard-to-dispose-of items. I’ve even stopped by a few times to see it. If you spot it, say hello from me! 

  When the driver came to pick up the container at the grand reveal event, he said he was so excited to be driving it all around Dallas. He shared that the drivers love driving the mural dumpsters around, especially on the highway. My favorite part is when he laid on the horn as he pulled away, I captured it all in this video on Instagram.

  One of my favorite aspects of this project is that this public art finds people who weren’t looking for it. The people dropping off their old paint cans at a Saturday clean-up event are exactly the community this mural was made for. The Monarchs on the side of that container are a reminder that Dallas is part of a migration corridor, and that our neighborhoods can do something meaningful for these insects if we choose to. I love turning everyday objects into something colorful and I’m really looking forward to doing more projects like this.

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  Watch the full process on YouTube.

  The Monarch butterflies from this mural are available as stickers and magnets in my shop. Shop stickers here.