Benny’s Pizza Peel Project
Benny’s Pizza has a community collective project called ”The Pizza Peel Art Initiative” and it is their creative way to spotlight local talent—using the very tools that helped build Benny’s. With locations across several states, they launched this project to repurpose broken wooden pizza paddles—once used to pull 28-inch pies from the oven—into unique canvases for community art. Rather than discard these expensive peels, they invited local artists—from tattooists to muralists—to transform them into one-of-a-kind pieces. I got word about the initiative and immediately reached out so that I could be a part of it. Below you will find my draft and process photos.
This is the completed draft of my design. It did not need to go through an approval process, but I wanted to mock it up to get a good idea of what I want it to look like.
After picking up the pizza peel from the location, I promptly brought it to my studio and started sketching out the illustration and picking out the colors that matched the closest to my mock up.
I began prepping the peel, particularly painting a layer or white acrylic gesso to help the colors pop.
I ended up using both acrylic paint applied with brushes and paint markers for detailing and outlines. This is the peel at the halfway point.
And here is the completed product! After adding all of the little details I sprayed the entire piece with a varnish to keep the paint in place and hopefully setting it up to last a long time!