The cavern opens wide, as passersby peer into the dim and craggy cave.
But out of the darkness, brightly colored surprises step out into the light.
The scene seems to unfold in a three-dimensional tableau that puts you right inside. The fact that it is instead a mural painted on the corner of a building speaks to the vision of artist Carl Leck.
Leck, a lauded muralist with works all over central Indiana, is installing his most recent work in Johnson County. His gummy bear-themed piece is being painted on the newly built Jiffy Lube store in Whiteland, as part of the company’s ongoing mural program.
Personally, he is drawn to these kinds of optical illusions in other works, so he felt this would be an eye-catching feature for people passing by on U.S. 31.
“It’s immediately engaging. I want to know what I’m looking at. It just kind of sucks you in,” he said.
Leck discovered his talent for art in elementary and middle school, and followed his interest throughout his career at Southport High School. Here, while he was still a student, he started his foray into mural work. Southport administrators asked him to paint some artwork on blank school walls.
After attending Herron School of Art and Design and Ball State University, he graduated with a degree in graphic art. He was invited by the coach of the girls basketball team at Southport to do some sports-themed murals on her office walls.
“The principal saw it and mentioned that they had a spot on our fieldhouse. He asked if I could paint something up there. Then the music department wanted something. So I ended up doing a bunch of work on the hallways,” “Before I knew it, I had spent a whole year painting things at Southport.”
Since that time, Leck has painted a wide variety of murals all over the region. His work can be seen in schools such as Center Grove Middle School North and Center Grove Middle School Central, as well as Sugar Grove, Maple Grove and North Grove elementary schools in Johnson County.
He took part in the 46 for XLVI project, which put murals all over downtown Indianapolis in advance of Super Bowl XLVI. His futuristic and engaging 3-D mural at Lucas Oil Stadium pays tributes to athletics and area landmarks.
The Super Bowl initiative was spearheaded by the Arts Council of Indianapolis, and ever since then, Leck has worked closely with the organization. That relationship is what connected him to Jiffy Lube of Indiana’s mural project.
The project was born out of the company’s Growing People Through Work initiative — a franchise-wide commitment to build up employees and the communities where they live and work.
Combining public art with the company’s franchises had always been something that had interested Steve Sanner, president and owner of Jiffy Lube Indiana.
“You drive past these concrete jungle retail areas, and there’s nothing interesting to look at,” he said. “And from a business standpoint, sign ordinances make your signs smaller and smaller and smaller. So you’re always looking for ways to notice that you’re here.”
The first mural in the project was commissioned to cover up graffiti that plagued the company’s Broad Ripple store.
“It was getting tagged, and every time we’d paint the side over again, it wouldn’t take more than a couple months before someone tagged it again,” Sanner said.
Looking for a solution, Sanner was connected with an artist collective called the Department of Public Words. The group painted over grafitti throughout Indianapolis with inspirational murals.
A phone call led to a partnership with Jiffy Lube Indiana, with artists doing a rendering of a mural to create a paint-by-number work, which was then put on the walls by community volunteers.
Since that time, Jiffy Lube has commissioned artists to paint murals all over Indiana.
More than 20 artists have taken part in the project. Leck had been chosen to do two previous murals for the company — a brightly colored piece of a bird gnawing on a gummy worm at the Allisonville Road Jiffy Lube, and his widely acclaimed Wizard of Oz-themed optical illusion mural in Fishers.
The approach is called “trompe l’oeil,” a French term that means to “deceive the eye.” Though the works are painted on flat surfaces, the use of perspective and shadow makes it appear that people are looking into a much deeper space.
The Wizard of Oz mural features three golden sculptures of a lion, tiger and bear guarding the front of the piece, while behind, a man in green working a control panel can be seen through a parted curtain.
Creating the effect required detailed sketching and building a 3-D scene in real life.
“If I’m mimicking real life, the best reference is real life,” Leck said. “I knew that I wanted lion-tiger-bear, in those positions, and also in gold. So I made some figurines out of clay and spray-painted them gold, to make a mini-set. I had an exact reference of what I wanted it to look like.”
While most projects he works on are commissioned and have a theme that he needs to stick with, the Jiffy Lube projects offer Leck a surprising amount of creative freedom.
“We get to play and have our own voice and let our own ideas kind of shine,” he said.
Sanner was so impressed by Leck’s previous work that he was chosen again to do the Whiteland store.
“That Whiteland store has tremendous visibility. As you’re driving north on (U.S.) 31, you’ll see both sides and see the 3-D design,” Sanner said. “The way he draws this one, it’s going to blow people away.”
His idea in Whiteland was to make a larger-than-life cave effect on the side of the store. Work began in late October, and Leck is still finishing up the details.
As a Southport native, he is proud to provide a thought-provoking piece of art for the southside community.
“It’s awesome,” he said. “The visibility is great.”
