Driving around Sacramento, it’s hard not to notice there’s a lot of street art. And a new mural of Prince is gaining attention.
Local artist Rachel Cate finished the mural — on 20th and O streets — this week and now several Prince fans have been making a point to go see it.
“We’re both getting an enormous amount of positive feedback that I never thought would happen,” Cate said, referring to herself and the owner of the wall she painted on, Rhonda Pope Flores. “A lot of people saying thank you.”
Nancy Wallace, who described herself as being “beyond a Prince fan," walked seven blocks to the mural after hearing about it.
“I’m so sad that he died and what happened to him,” Wallace said. “It really puts love into my heart that the owner of this building is also such a Prince fan that she gave the artist the wall to do it on.”
Originally, Cate was not planning on using Flores’ wall. It was only after a permit fell through for a different wall that Cate was connected through a friend to Flores.
“I called Rhonda [and] she was like, ‘Well, what’s it going to be?’” Cate recounted, “And I said, ‘It’s going to be of Prince.’”
“And I’m, ‘oh my goodness, woo,’” Flores said.
It turned out that Flores is also a huge Prince fan. She even hosts a yearly tribute event in Sacramento called Princeology. The two women realized they had actually met there before.
The fact that they reconnected and were able to collaborate on this mural project was, for them, fate.
“I think we both agree that Prince intervened and he put himself where he wanted to be,” Flores said.
Cate worked nearly 12 hour days and finished the mural in just six days. She used stencils and spray paint and said the hardest part was simply working in the heat.