photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Left Photo: Painters Travis Andregg, left, and Austin Meyers, with the company Strong Hand Steady Signs, work on a sunflower design Monday on the south side of the new Penn Street Lofts building at Eighth and Pennsylvania streets. The flower was designed by Lawrence artist Stephen Johnson, who teaches at the University of Kansas and whose works appear in numerous private and public art collections. Right Photo: A towering rose designed by Johnson appears on the north side of the Penn Street Lofts building.

A restaurant’s sprawling, colorful garden used to bloom where an apartment complex and parking lot now sit in East Lawrence — a fact that wasn’t lost on developer Tony Krsnich, who has paid tribute to that garden by commissioning a pair of enormous painted flowers to adorn the complex’s brick exterior.

Krsnich, who has revitalized the Warehouse Arts District, is putting finishing touches on the $11.8 million affordable housing complex called Penn Street Lofts, and those touches include a giant sunflower and a rose crawling up two sides of the four-story building.

Before he began building the complex at Eighth and Pennsylvania streets, Krsnich let Bon Bon restaurant use the land for its kitchen garden. Though the restaurant closed in June of 2020, the lushness and vibrancy of the corner garden stayed with Krsnich and, along with other gardens in East Lawrence, became the inspiration for the floral design on the building.

Krsnich commissioned Lawrence artist Stephen Johnson to design the enormous plants.

“We wanted to make sure your first impression entering the district was one of creativity,” Krsnich said. “We have a lot of talented artists living in the Warehouse Arts District, and Stephen is one of them.”

For Johnson, who has created large-scale artworks all over the country — for metro stations, airports, hospitals, universities, libraries and more — the flowers on Penn Street Lofts are special because they’re where he lives. Unlike, say, his mosaic mural in the Dekalb Avenue Subway Station in Brooklyn, N.Y., or his massive mural in North Hollywood, Calif., the flowers will greet Johnson every day.

photo by: Courtesy of Stephen Johnson

A portion of Stephen Johnson’s mosaic mural at Dekalb Avenue Subway Station in Brooklyn, N.Y.

“It’s about celebrating the community,” Johnson said. “The community garden idea of growth and rebirth and blossoming. It’s very East Lawrence.”

The sunflower on the building’s south side and the rose on the north are not specific types of plants. They’re not meant to be precise botanical specimens, Johnson said; nor are they abstractions. They’re what he calls stylistic “hybrids,” and they’re rendered in black and white.

photo by: Christy Schneider/Yellow Pencil Studio

Lawrence artist Stephen Johnson is pictured with his mural “The Language of Care,” which he recently created for Heartland Community Health Center.

Johnson, whose work frequently bursts with color — his just-finished mural at Heartland Community Health Center being the most recent example and his upcoming sculpture for The Marshalltown Performing Arts Center in Iowa being another — said the absence of color is meant to complement the black and white typography on the nearby historic Poehler Lofts building, which Krsnich also developed. Though he’s a fan of color, Johnson thought colored flowers might in this instance seem “garish.”

Austin Meyers and Travis Andregg of the company Strong Hand Steady Signs are in charge of painting Johnson’s design, and they could be seen on a lift this week adding lines and textures to the bright white images. Johnson notes that they also have leeway to contribute their personal interpretations to the work.

The flowers are a “creative collaboration,” Johnson said, that “speak to our shared vision for Lawrence as a city of the arts.”

photo by: Rochelle Valverde

Public on-street parking along Pennsylvania Street and the Penn Street Lofts building, 801 Pennsylvania St., are pictured on Oct. 22, 2021.