New mural emerges in downtown St. Pete

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - A patriotic piece of art has emerged in the downtown mural scene; an American flag.

"You don't really see it coming up, you're on Martin Luther King coming down towards Central, and you hit that one corner on 3rd Avenue, then boom, this thing just hits you right in the face," said Jon Hair, the artist behind the mural. "Everybody loves it because it looks like it's curling on the building and not just painted on flat."

The mural is on the side of a building on Martin Luther King Jr Street North and 3rd Avenue North.

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Hair has had a 23-year career as a sculptor. He has one in St. Pete, 12 in Florida, and just installed his 70th total in North Carolina. He has commissioned over 100 worldwide, but this is his first mural.

Mural artist Jon Hair

"I was like, ya know what, I want to put a giant American flag on that building because it represents all of us. It’s not just one group or two groups or one political party. It belongs to everybody," Hair said. "I love the flag, we have a friend there in St. Pete who is related to Betsy Ross, she’s the one who kind of put the first flag together. I thought, well, this ought to be the town that needs a big American flag, and I was dying to paint a mural, and I thought the flag was the strongest image. It’s so uplifting to people."

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The mural took about a week to complete. Hair says he started with projections, then marked the wall to get a blueprint of the design.

With some help, Hair finished it about a week ago.