This colorful mural is the work of Dan Thompson, artistically known as Handskillz. He completed the piece in 2021 as part of Jiffy Lube's Mural Project, which is part of their Growing People through Work initiative and is in collaboration with the Arts Council of Indianapolis. It only took him about 60-75 hours to finish.As fate would have it the location of the mural happens to also be in the neighborhood Thompson grew up in.
The mural depicts one of Thompsons' trademark characters, a robot, holding a tiny cat in its hand and looking eye to eye with it. Its background story is that it reflects a chance encounter between two passing strangers who appear to be very different but upon looking each other in the eye they discover one thing they have in common--green eyes. It is a very colorful mural that is painted in a graffiti style, which is also Thompson's trademark. I like the contrast that the mural's orange background has with the robot. You can see the robot and graffiti style in another of his famous pieces located in fountain square titled, The Creation of Adam.
When speaking about the mural Thompson has said, "I see my robots as scavengers, adding parts and upgrading themselves as they move along; not unlike us. With feral cats being literal scavengers, I saw a parallel between the two. I wanted to show an encounter between two roaming strangers and despite all of their differences, they recognize something in each other. Maybe they're not so different after all."
Parking here to get a closer look is simple. You can pull into the Jiffy Lube parking lot or just outside of it, park, get out and get a closer look.This is a decent mural, that has a lot going on for the eyes. Thompson does great work and is one of the area's top street artists. read more