If public art in downtown Huntsville were a poker game, you could say the city went “all in” on its latest acquisition. And people seem to love it.

The latest piece in an ongoing project to make downtown artistically special is a galaxy mural - a big galaxy mural - on Holmes Avenue that covers the back wall of Fountain Parker Harbarger & Associates insurance agency. To make that placement even more interesting, the wall faces a parking lot shared with perhaps the most grounded place in downtown -the federal courthouse.

“We wanted something that continued the space story line in a unique way,” Downtown Huntsville Inc. President Chad Emerson said. “Not as direct as a rocket, but more interpretive.” Emerson also wanted to move downtown art from expected places to places people might not expect. And he wanted “a popular place to get a selfie.”

North Alabama artist Jessie Andrews poses with one of the planets she created for a wall-sized mural in downtown Huntsville, Ala.

Area artist Jessie Andrews won the commission in part because of an earlier work painted on a door in the downtown alley leading from Clinton Avenue to Humphrey’s patio. It is also a glimpse of space, and it has proven very popular as a selfie-spot.

The big new galaxy doesn’t really exist in space, as far as we know, but it is real in Andrews’ vision and now on the wall. “I didn’t want to replicate what’s already out there and exists so beautifully,” she said. “I wanted it to be something that came from my imagination. I wanted to see where I could go with it and what I could come up with.”

Andrews worked on the project all summer including a study of the kinds of quality materials that can survive sunlight and how to drive the “boom lift” necessary to get her to the top of the wall. She started by talking to conventional metal-working shops, but they couldn’t really understand her vision. But metal design and fabrication company Drop Metal got it immediately and offered to share ideas and techniques with the artist. The company also fabricated the big aluminum planets.

This mural by Alabama artist Jessie Andrews fills an entire business wall in downtown Huntsville. Andrews created her galaxy as part of the city's push to add art in public spaces downtown.

Once she had created her planets, Andrews had four days to complete the wall and the planets’ installation. If she worked on a Saturday and Sunday, she could move freely in the parking lot, but during weekdays she had to park the boom lift in an empty space and work from there.

What has been the response? “Really wonderful,” Andrews said. “People are thanking me. I don’t think they necessarily should be, but it feels good that people want that for the city, whether it’s me or somebody else doing it.”

The mural now is an easy walk between popular restaurants and bars in Huntsville’s growing downtown entertainment district. “It’s free,” Andrews said. “My hope is that people will want to see it and it will bring more people to this side of town. It seems to be a nice surprise for people.”

And they can also grab a whole new kind of selfie.