PHOENIX — A local artist is garnering national attention for his mural of Devin Booker and Booker's dog Haven.
Bill Taggart, better known as dadsocks on Instagram, created the 8-by-8-foot unnamed mural as part of the first Murals and Margaritas event at restaurant The Golden Margarita. He was inspired to create Suns-themed artwork after seeing how the team has brought Phoenix residents together.
“We’ve really been torn apart, you know, physically, politically, emotionally, just with this whole political season, and then COVID on top of that,” he said. “And just to see everybody just kind of push that to the side for this season and just be from Arizona, be from Phoenix and support the Suns has been really fun to watch.”
He said he put a lot of thought into the mural and wanted to display the more human side of Booker.
“It’s just really cool to see that different personal side of [him], which is why I didn’t paint him in his jersey or playing basketball,” he said.
Taggart is a stencil artist, meaning he applies different layers and shades of paint using hand-cut or laser-cut stencils. For the Booker mural, he used over 150 unique cut stencils.
“It’s kind of like a giant puzzle that you’re creating from an image and then putting it all back together,” he said.
He began the piece on Wednesday, June 30, the night that the Suns won the Western Conference Finals. He says Suns fans were “going crazy” that night and coming up to him as he was painting and expressing their excitement to see the finished mural. He finished it the following day.
Taggart says the response to the piece has been great. His mural was even posted on the official Suns Instagram page where Booker and Chris Paul commented.
“A lot of times when something gets attention, especially art-wise, people always have an opinion about it or have something to say. And I have to say it’s been incredibly positive,” he said.
He believes the mural will stay up until the end of the month, and then it will be painted over.
Right now, he is working on creating a small shop to make prints and t-shirts of the image so Suns fans can have the artwork forever.
