Turner mural taking shape downtown

RITZVILLE – Stroll down Main Avenue and you'll see characters being painted on a building next to Umpqua Bank.

Tina Turner, working with John Rankin and Linda Kubik, is adding barkeeps and customers to the building exterior. The depiction is based on a black-and-white photo from the era when the building was a tavern called The Office.

Rankin will complete the "ghost signage" and Kubik will add an awning.

Turner said she typically works on commission, painting scenes of farming and aviation. In 2013, for example, she painted a mural at the nearby Gritman Senior Center.

"The best part of painting murals is meeting folks who stop to see how the project is progressing," she said.

She recalled working in the Hillyard area of Spokane a few years back. At one point, she painted at night, standing on a scaffold at a car dealership.

"You'd hear a gunshot about once a week," she said. "But the street people had my back."

Back then, a graffiti artist in his 20s told her they beat up anyone who defaces artwork.

"That's their code of honor," she said. "You don't destroy someone else's artwork."