Greensburg grocery store murals incorporate the community

Tom Charley knew he wanted to add a splash of color to the Charley Family Shop’n Save stores in Greensburg.

About 7,000 square feet of color, as it turns out.

That’s where Greensburg artist Daisher Rocket came in, creating a 4,600 square-foot mural on several walls of the East Pittsburgh Street Shop’n Save that includes the old Charley Bros. delivery truck and the county courthouse dome. Rocket completed that mural last July.

This week, he wrapped up a second mural on the north-facing wall of the Main Street Shop’n Save, serving up a bright palette to welcome drivers to the city.

It also includes local landmarks like The Palace Theatre marquee, the Greensburg Train Station and the Blessed Sacrament Cathedral.

“This is basically a continuation of the last one,” said Rocket, who has a studio in Jeannette and attended Seton Hill University. “We looked at the layout and the aesthetics of each building. Because of how the train station is set — with that big long roof, it fit here perfectly. Same with the cathedral because of the tall part of the (Shop’n Save’s) side wall.”

In addition to recognizable elements of the city, both murals are also chock full of flowers, leaves and natural imagery. Rocket said the colors of those elements were chosen carefully.

“The flowers are made with the colors they use in the Charley Family Shop’n Save logo,” he said. “There are two greens, two reds, a yellow and a white. And then all the other colors are derivatives from the opposite side of the color wheel, which makes everything really contrast and pop. I just really like the flower motif.”

Last year, Rocket said he had his artist’s eye on several other large building canvases in Greensburg, with an even larger goal in mind.

“There’s a type of bush that will grow by sending out little runner plants below the ground, and always in a straight line,” he said. “That’s what I’d like to do here, so that the murals, if you were to map them out from above, would create that same sort of pattern — ‘drawing’ something over a huge space.”

Some of those potential spaces include the DV8 coffee shop on Pennsylvania Avenue as well as the Troutman building on South Main Street. But, Rocket added, getting all of the right permissions can be a job in itself.

“I’ve been sizing up the Troutman building. I’ve definitely made it clear to city hall that I’d like to do that one,” he said. “I think there are some issues with who all has ownership in the building. There’s also finding investors for the funding, because it would be a pretty big job.”

Rocket plans to add sealant as a final touch on the latest mural, but he also wants to return to someday — there’s still plenty of wall left.

“Each year I’d like to come back to one of the Shop’n Saves to keep adding to them,” he said.

It’s precisely what Charley had in mind when he rejoined the family’s grocery business full time in 2012.

“We had this massive canvas that we could use to create something really neat,” Charley said. “We wanted to see how things went with the first one and then move right on to the second one; and we wanted to incorporate the community and tie them into the building.”