Samantha Neukirch applied the printed images to two 4 x 12-feet boards and covered them with several protective coatings, to be installed on the buildings in Riverhead, New York.
Installed on her 23rd birthday, the “BLUE.EXE” mural depicts local marine life and is dedicated to Jeffrey K Fisher, Neukirch’s mentor, Riverhead Local reported. The work took 100 hours to complete, with the artist contending with streaky images and inconsistent colour density from her “defective laser printer”, which had to be returned for a warranty repair.
“We’ve been staring at it in pieces for months now. I had to fully embrace the limitations of using a computer to create this,” Neukirch said.
There were also space limitations with the 11- and 14-inch paper the images were printed on, which were cut to be taped together to form images of sea turtles, a shark and some sea lions.
Neukirch added: “Being an artist is really like being an athlete. If you don’t practice and go to the gym, you’ll only go so far.”