ASHLAND — Allison Pence, a Mansfield-based artist responsible for the city's "Cosmic Crosswalk" (an Under-the-Sea mural at the Mansfield area YMCA), the "Stained Glass Alley" near Central Park and more started work on her first mural in Ashland on Wednesday.
She started in the morning, painting blue clouds and an orange sun onto the side of The Tracey Jones Team's building on Main Street, between Downtown Perk and Peking Chinese Restaurant.
Tracey Jones, a local real estate agent with Keller Williams, hired Pence to "spruce up" her team's building.
When it's done, the mural will be a "wild outdoor, floral thing" with bright colors and patterns behind it, Pence said.
It will likely take her four days to complete. Pence planned to stay out painting on Wednesday "until I can't stand anymore," she said.
Pence got her start as an artist after she quit a teaching job in 2018 to pursue the craft full-time. Not longer after, she painted Mansfield's "Cosmic Crosswalk" in 2019, her first mural.Â
From there, her mural painting "snowballed" as more people asked her to do them, and now she's doing them everywhere, she said.
Recently, she's painted a wall of graffiti-style art in Yoga 419 in Lexington, an ice cream-themed mural at Caleb's At DK's in Galion, the backroom of Chuy's Tacos and Margaritas in Mifflin, and the entire interior of Tito's Cantina & Grill in Lexington.
The Tracey Jones Team's mural will likely not be the last time Ashland sees the work of Pence. She teased the existence of future projects in the area without going into specifics on Wednesday.
