Sicilian Dream

Sicilian Dream fills a 6 × 24 foot wall at Nino's Pizza Star in the Princeton Shopping Center. Nino Spera grew up in Sicily, and asked for his home in place of the old Tuscan wallpaper.

It began about seventeen years earlier, when the rain washed out a fourth birthday party in Grover Park and everyone ended up at Pizza Star, where Nino came to the rescue. Victoria painted a Sicilian horse and cart to say thank you, and the Colosseum a few years later. Then came the whole wall: about 120 hours over several weeks, after the shop had closed for the night.

Mount Etna rises as Mother Nature over Taormina. Everything shrinks into the distance by the golden ratio, about 1 to 0.618. The palm and lemon trees were painted from life, the grapes from a vine on Guyot Street, and customers suggested some of the things hiding in it. While she painted, the mural turned into a search-and-find: 78 things to discover, from twelve racing cars down to one pizza star.