Artist Lisa Soranaka paints mural that honors Chinese, Japanese history of Trent Alley

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the height of the racist attacks against people of Asian descent locally, nationally and abroad, artist Lisa Soranaka was looking for a way to make a supportive statement to the Asian American Pacific Islander community.

Soranaka, in talks with Melissa Huggins, then the director of Spokane Arts, considered an exhibit, a neighborhood or community project, a mural and more. Things moved slowly because of the pandemic, and when Huggins stepped away from Spokane Arts, conversations started once more with the organization’s current director Skyler Oberst.

The project they decided on, a mural, was expedited earlier this year when the Downtown Spokane Partnership reached out to Spokane Arts asking if the organization could connect them with an artist who would be interested in working on a project that honored Trent Alley’s history as the city’s international district and its connection to Spokane’s Chinese and Japanese communities.

Shelby Allison, public art program director for Spokane Arts, and the rest of the team thought of Soranaka, who is Japanese American, and connected her with the Downtown Spokane Partnership earlier this year.

“Once we showed DSP a little bit of Lisa’s work, they were like, ‘Yep, let’s go with her,’ ” Allison said. “Lisa was very excited to finally have a place to expand on her ideas.”

Soranaka’s mural is located in the alley behind Madeleine’s Cafe and Patisserie, 415 W. Main Ave.

When brainstorming, Soranaka wanted to take the area’s history into account while also making sure her piece wasn’t a literal translation of that history.

“I wanted to take influence from that history, while still creating something that I would create that imparts my own style, my own personal voice and my own history,” she said.

Soranaka took a lot of inspiration from patterns and imagery typically found in Chinese and Japanese textiles, a nod to the laundry, tailor and seamstress shops which were once popular in Trent Alley.

The mural features floral prints, geometric stars and a scalloped wave pattern as well as koi fish and a turtle in a blue stream, rabbits on a green hill, butterflies flitting among the flowers and a pair of frogs.

The frogs symbolize good fortune, while the rabbits symbolize the coming of spring.

“The cherry blossoms, rabbits, butterflies, each one is utilized a lot for symbolic reasons, and so I tried to keep ones that had meaning to both cultures,” Soranaka said.

As of mid-June, Soranaka has the top-third of the mural to complete. She plans to add more patterns, more cherry blossoms, more representational imagery and more color.

Soranaka has painted murals before, including one in Pullman completed last year and another in Spokane, between Wall and Howard streets, that she painted with Mariah Boyle two years ago.

Soranaka typically works with a partner when designing and painting murals. She’s had volunteers help with this project, but this Trent Alley mural is a bigger project than she would typically accept solo.

It’s also her biggest mural, period, requiring Soranaka, who doesn’t love heights, to use a lift to reach the top of the wall. Using the lift brings Soranaka close to the art but also skews her perspective slightly, a change from her typical studio work which allows her to easily step back from the piece she’s working on and evaluate her next steps.

“You have to have a really good plan in place, because you’re getting such a distorted view as you’re painting,” she said.

Soranaka typically projects her design onto the wall to get her initial sketch down, but she drew this mural freehand, as she wasn’t able to find a place for her projector.

Painting outdoors meant she had to think of things like plastic wrap to keep her paint from drying out and containers in which she could mix colors so she didn’t have to lug a heavy can of paint up and down with her every time she climbed a ladder or used the lift.

Weather protection, for herself and the mural, was also vital. Soranaka invested in a sun visor that reminds her of something her grandmother would have worn and chose exterior paint that could withstand the elements, from the hottest summer sun to the freezing ice and snow of winter.

Before painting, Soranaka primed the wall with a concrete primer, and after she completes the mural, she will apply a weather- and graffiti-resistant protective layer.

Soranaka expects to be finished with her mural by the end of June at the earliest or the end of the summer at the latest. Soranaka’s mural is planned as the first in a series that highlights the city’s diverse cultural roots and stories that originated downtown.

Soranaka has enjoyed chatting with passersby as she works, saying many expressed joy in seeing a previously blank wall become activated with a new piece of art.

Creative capital, oft-ignored, is important to the fabric of a city, Soranaka said. Art drives community, and at a time when technology can make life feel isolating, having artwork, like a mural, encourage connection is all the more important.

While the mural has a lot of historical references to her community and background, Soranaka is hopeful that people of all communities and ethnic backgrounds can find something to connect with in her mural.

“Regardless of who you are, there is a need to feel seen, feel heard, feel welcomed, so the more acknowledgment of that, the better,” she said. “Art is a great way to do that, because it’s something that can be here that people can see, and you don’t have to have a ticket to come see this, and you don’t have to pay money. It’s here and available for you to walk by and experience however it is that you experience it.”