A 49 foot wide mural I have painted that is located between 3d and 4th Avenue on Columbia Street in Vancouver.

Originally I named this piece - "Through the Cracks", because just like weeds that weren't supposed to grow from the asphalt, people somehow overcome adversities and outrun themselves and others to reach success. But as I developed this idea further, I realized I could use this theme as a metaphor in many other ways to tell stories. Therefore, a new name came up - "Spider-Man", which is an homage and a nod to one of my good friends who is the model in this image and also the biggest fan of Spider-Man I know. His hard work and persistence helped him break into the animation industry which is a really competitive field. Thanks to the years of hard work he now creates animation for movies - the highest level of quality an animator could reach for. In a way it turned out to be a happy accident that the model for this mural happened to be someone who in mind, could really relate to this message. - Ilya Viryachev