Evan Laisure, ’17, is making his mark around Northeast Ohio. For the artist and Kent State alumnus, what started out as drawings and graffiti as a little kid has transformed into a desirable skill and the basis for his life’s work. His latest work, a vinyl mural called “A Walk in the Park,” was installed earlier this year in the Rocky River Public Library.
The mural, which covers the walls of the stairwell leading to the children’s department, is meant to educate and enchant the library’s youngest patrons. Featuring 150 different species of flora and fauna, it is a celebration of nature with plants and animals that can all be found in the nearby Rocky River Reservation. It’s also a reflection of the community, many of whom provided ideas for what to include in the artwork through surveys.
While it’s a true homage in many ways to wildlife, there is a little creative license added to the illustration. Once Evan saw the animals at the final scale they would be in the mural, he was concerned they might intimidate some children. He added sunglasses to give them a funky edge and to impart the idea that “nature is cool.”
Evan is the owner of The Pastimes, an in-house screenprinting shop that prints wholesale apparel and products for the outdoor brand - The Pastimes.com. Since graduating from Kent State with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in graphic design, he’s put his skills to work, figuring out how to monetize his passion for art and evolve his businesses to meet life’s demands as they come.
“I knew that I needed to get into something that I could feel like I self-made,” Evan said. “Now I have a trade and craft.”
Evan is proud to have an eco-friendly printshop that only uses water-based inks and prints on 100 percent cotton material. He sells these items at shows throughout the Midwest, and for the local shows, he brings an additional business - his mobile food trailer where customers can create their own bagel sandwiches.
His focus and drive is in many ways inspired by the caliber of work he was exposed to during his time at Kent State from professors like Aoife Mooney, David Roll and Christopher Darling.
“Every class, every studio, the professor sitting across from me was just top-shelf. They were titans in the industry, and that was super inspiring,” said Laisure. “I wasn’t comparing myself to classmates because we were all comparing ourselves to them.”
In fact, his first introduction to murals was through late Kent State professor Christopher Darling in 2017. Evan and another alumnus worked with Darling for a month and half on a mural project in the , which received a silver medal from the New York Society of Illustrators in the Surface Design category. The experience showed Evan the practical process of completing a mural, but more importantly, it also taught him what it means to be connected and committed to the community as an artist. He started practicing mural work on sheets of drywall, using a projector to get the proportions correct.
In 2018, he was hired to create a 107-foot mural for the Ingenuity Festival and, soon after, he completed a series of murals for ADIDAS. The Rocky River Public Library project, which was completed with collaboration from fellow artists Joe Richmond and Julia Morales, is just the latest in a long string of this type of work - and he’s not stopping anytime soon. He has a mural coming to the Rec Center in Cleveland, and in the summer of 2024, Evan’s artwork will be installed as a large vinyl mural, wrapping a parking deck in Cuyahoga Falls.
“Every project that I take on has got to be something I’m interested in,” Evan explained. “When you’re excited about the subject matter, much more passion goes into it.”