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Danh Le volunteers to help fill in a new two-story mural being painted at Sterling Plaza on Friday, May 20, 2022, in Houston. The mural features signifiers from across the spectrum of Asian cultures and traditions and is being led by Thomas Tran, a Vietnamese American artist and Alief native who put out a flyer on Instagram looking for volunteers to help him fill in the mural. Over 100 people have answered the call.

Volunteers help fill in a new two-story mural being painted at Sterling Plaza on Friday, May 20, 2022, in Houston. The mural features signifiers from across the spectrum of Asian cultures and traditions and is being led by Thomas Tran, a Vietnamese American artist and Alief native who put out a flyer on Instagram looking for volunteers to help him fill in the mural. Over 100 people have answered the call.

Angela Hoang, 14, volunteers to help fill in a new two-story mural being painted at Sterling Plaza on Friday, May 20, 2022, in Houston. The mural features signifiers from across the spectrum of Asian cultures and traditions and is being led by Thomas Tran, a Vietnamese American artist and Alief native who put out a flyer on Instagram looking for volunteers to help him fill in the mural. Over 100 people have answered the call.

Volunteers help fill in a new two-story mural being painted at Sterling Plaza on Friday, May 20, 2022, in Houston. The mural features signifiers from across the spectrum of Asian cultures and traditions and is being led by Thomas Tran, a Vietnamese American artist and Alief native who put out a flyer on Instagram looking for volunteers to help him fill in the mural. Over 100 people have answered the call.

Thomas Tran, a Vietnamese American artist and Alief native, poses for a photograph in front of the new two-story mural he’s leading to get painted at Sterling Plaza on Friday, May 20, 2022, in Houston. The mural features signifiers from across the spectrum of Asian cultures and traditions. Tran put out a flyer on Instagram looking for volunteers to help him fill in the mural. Over 100 people have answered the call.

Volunteers help fill in a new two-story mural being painted at Sterling Plaza on Friday, May 20, 2022, in Houston. The mural features signifiers from across the spectrum of Asian cultures and traditions and is being led by Thomas Tran, a Vietnamese American artist and Alief native who put out a flyer on Instagram looking for volunteers to help him fill in the mural. Over 100 people have answered the call.

Volunteers help fill in a new two-story mural being painted at Sterling Plaza on Friday, May 20, 2022, in Houston. The mural features signifiers from across the spectrum of Asian cultures and traditions and is being led by Thomas Tran, a Vietnamese American artist and Alief native who put out a flyer on Instagram looking for volunteers to help him fill in the mural. Over 100 people have answered the call.

Volunteers help fill in a new two-story mural being painted at Sterling Plaza on Friday, May 20, 2022, in Houston. The mural features signifiers from across the spectrum of Asian cultures and traditions and is being led by Thomas Tran, a Vietnamese American artist and Alief native who put out a flyer on Instagram looking for volunteers to help him fill in the mural. Over 100 people have answered the call.

Volunteers help fill in a new two-story mural being painted at Sterling Plaza on Friday, May 20, 2022, in Houston. The mural features signifiers from across the spectrum of Asian cultures and traditions and is being led by Thomas Tran, a Vietnamese American artist and Alief native who put out a flyer on Instagram looking for volunteers to help him fill in the mural. Over 100 people have answered the call.

When Thomas Tran was planning his design for the Asiatown Community Mural, he wanted to make sure that everyone in the neighborhood could see their culture on the giant wall across from the H-Mart on Bellaire. Growing up in Alief — one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the United States’ most diverse city — he had no shortage of reference points from which to draw.

There is a woman in a hijab sipping boba tea next to a woman in a traditional Filipina dress, and a kid shoving an egg roll into the mouth of the mythological Japanese tengu. Farther down the wall, Sun Wukong, the Chinese trickster god, cackles over a platter of roasted pig, while Garuda, a Hindu demigod, looks on stoically.

“Maybe we’re just an advanced society in Alief,” Tran, 25, joked.

The Asiatown Community Mural completed Sunday was painted with over five days last week with help from other artists, students and community members as part of a team of over 200 volunteers who learned about the project mostly through Instagram or word of mouth.

For Tran, bringing the community into his process is what makes murals worth doing. As a student at the Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio, he was asked to do a mural for a fashion week exhibition at the college and learned that large-scale projects are simply more fun with friends.

“I wanted to share that experience with people,” Tran said. “Art is a lonely gig, and this is the one time where you can basically have a party and do art.”

Every day at 4 p.m., Tran would pull up in a minivan full of paint supplies and set up two tents on a grassy median in the Sterling Plaza parking lot until midnight. The volunteers would come trickling in soon after, and he’d direct them to a paint-by-numbers style banner which would instruct them which colors went in which places.

Once the volunteers decided which part of the mural they wanted to paint, Tran would send them on their way with a brush and red Solo cup with their desired paint color, encouraging them to stay hydrated and take a break if the searing Houston heat grew too intense.

Older, more experienced painters climbed scaffolding to paint the uppermost portion of the two-story mural, while young children, like 7-year-old Phoenix Le, painted sections near the bottom. Each volunteer who contributed their time signed their name near the bottom of the wall at the center of the mural.

“He may not understand it now, but he’ll be able to come back later and say that he contributed to this and it’s a part of the whole city,” said Phoenix’s mother, Vy Le.

On HoustonChronicle.com: How an artist uses shipping containers to break barriers in Alief

The mural was commissioned by the Vietnamese Culture and Science Association (VCSA), which received a grant from Houston in Action for the artwork, and painted on the back of a building in the Sterling Plaza shopping center which includes a tea café, ice cream parlor and donut shop. They felt Tran, who had painted the Alief Community Mural in 2019, was the right person to lead the project.

“Thomas is very young but he loves to learn about different cultures and bring the Asian cultures into the mainstream, reflecting between family and animals and food and activities, and in a way it’s a very futuristic, abstract kind of animation. He’s very creative, and that’s what we love,” said VCSA board member Thanh Le.

The official unveiling ceremony for the mural is on June 4, with various speakers and a lion dance troupe.

“Especially for Houston’s young people, this is great because they see art all around town,” the board member said. “So OK, come to this side of town now, because we have something to show you, too.”

Sam González Kelly is a reporter for the Houston Chronicle.

You can reach Sam at sam.kelly@chron.com