Mural artist Victor Ving and photographer Lisa Beggs live full-time in their RV while traveling across the U.S. creating large letter postcard murals in various cities.
Victor is a former graffiti artist born and raised in NY.
After 15 years, Victor became tired of graffiti and decided to use his aerosol skills and style to create public murals. His first postcard mural was in Chinatown, NYC. It was so well-received by the community that he felt compelled to try it in other cities.
The popular 1930s postcards that inspired the Greetings Tour.
At the time, Victor didn’t realize he was unconsciously referencing the 1930s-50s “Greetings From” large letter postcards. But this inspired him and Lisa to start collecting these postcards from antique stores. Soon the Greetings Tour project was born with Lisa’s help.
Lisa Beggs, photographer, is the other half of the Greetings Tour.
Lisa is a photographer originally from Ohio. She merged her two grandfathers’ jobs, one who photographed postcards and the other who had an RV business, to come up with the Greetings Tour. The goal of the project is to travel around the U.S. in their RV and collaborate with the locals to create a long-lasting artwork that represents their city.
The Greetings Tour partners with local community members and artists on murals in each city.
Victor says that some people call his work street art, but he considers it public art and believes that the most important part of public art is involving the community. So Victor and Lisa partner with local community members and artists to come up with a mural that everyone is excited about and feels represents their hometown well.
Victor prepping a wall that will soon have a postcard mural on it.
The same wall after the Greetings Tour put their touch on it.
The way Victor and Lisa approach these mural projects varies from city to city. Some towns will contact the couple to create a mural, while in others the couple look in advance to secure wall space.
The Toledo, Ohio mural includes landmarks like the downtown skyline and the Toledo Skyway bridge.
The couple spends time in the cities where they’ll be creating murals to get to know the area better. During that time, Lisa photographs images that will be drawn inside the letters. These large letter postcard murals incorporate the classic elements of the city but also include modern landmarks, icons and features to fully capture the area.
The Greetings Tour couple drives through Death Valley as they travel across America.
They left NYC in April 2015 with the plan to travel around the U.S. for a year. But as with many people who transition to a full-time RV lifestyle, they realized that they weren’t in a hurry for their tour to end.
The creative process of the murals, their exact locations, and a list of the icons featured in the artwork is all documented by Lisa on their blog.
Their Instagram and Facebook feed is a beautiful and vivid collection of the postcard murals that the couple has created along with a visual journey of their life on the road.
