Do you Love where you live enough to wallpaper your home with iconic figures? One long-time San Luis Obispo resident is doing just that.
Jamie Lewis is trying to wrap up in what she’s calling SLO Toile.
“I think that quality translates really well to what we’ve done here because everyone on here is not someone you would necessarily recognize unless you’ve lived here a long time,” said SLO Toile creator Lewis.
It’s a wallpaper she plans to plaster all over her bathroom walls, each design a homage to San Luis Obispo. People featured include Phyllis Madonna, pediatrician Dr. Rene Bravo, musicians Damon Castillo and Weird Al along with places like the Sunset Drive-In, Downtown SLO Farmers’ Market, Madonna Plaza, Madonna Inn’s famous champagne cakes, High Street Deli, Cal Poly, Bishop Peak and many others.
“Each of these things, everyone on here is someone that’s important to me,” Lewis said.
From her childhood pediatrician that’s now her children’s doctor to an old, abandoned orphanage where she had one of her first dates with her now husband and even long-time KSBY anchor Rick Martel sitting front and center.
“If you grew up here in the 80s and 90s, Rick Martel was a really recognizable face and his voice is really recognizable. He had that silver wave hair, he just had a manner about him. He was unflappable, so I wanted to include him as a great communicator of San Luis Obispo,” Lewis said.
From the brain of Lewis to the pen of Anna Takahashi, SLO Toile came to life from over 5,000 miles away in Japan where illustrator Takahashi now lives.
She and Lewis met when she was living in Templeton and then made the move to SLO, so when Takahashi got the unusual request, there was no hesitation.
Using an old animation technique called rotoscoping, Takahashi got to work.
“Basically a tracing method that comes from animation. Each design is really detailed because I’m tracing over photographs and creating designs as well but I was deciding how best to draw the lines so it looked how Jamie really wanted,” she said.
Twenty-four designs, three motifs and three months later, a San Luis Obispo wallpaper was born.
The illustrator even hiding a couple of Easter eggs with Lewis’s children’s names in the art.
Lewis is selling her idea. The print can be bought in different forms – sheets, pillows, wallpaper and more. All the proceeds will be donated to help fund arts in San Luis Obispo schools.
