During the first week of June at the VB Street Art Festival in her hometown of Virginia Beach, women's rowing senior Gabby Gonzalez painted a mural on a sculpture as a part of a three-day live painting event.
 
 Gonzalez was one of 15 people from across the country who submitted a plan for how she would paint the 12-foot peaked prism-like structure.
 
"In high school I painted a mural for them as part of a Girl Scout project, so I already knew the person in charge," said Gonzalez. "Then in May, I saw that they put the opportunity of painting sculpture on the corner of the ViBe District so I was like, 'Oh, that would be cool! I've painted once, let's see if I can like get in there again.'  So, I was sitting in the Johnson Center making up like a plan to send it in before the deadline, and I got accepted!"
 
Gonzalez's inspiration for her mural was the ViBe District itself, including their logo colors of blue, green, yellow, and white. "Since I was drawing it on my computer, I didn't have any like fancy software, so I tried to keep it simple. You see, it is the colors of the vibe district logo in a dot radiant kind of thing."
 
The murals stay up for six months before the district will pick a new set of people to paint the sculptures again.
 
Gonzalez is not an art major, despite her artistic talents. She's currently pursuing a degree in Forensic Psychology at George Mason. Art is an outlet she keeps as a hobby.
 
"I enjoy it," said Gonzalez. "It's just kind of freeing, you know? Like, getting the opportunity just to do whatever I wanted. Especially on big projects like that, there's a lot of freedom to just use creativity that I can't use in other places."
 
If you're in Virginia Beach, check out Gabby's sculpture at the corner of Baltic Ave and 18^th Street!