Grids and Guessing Games

June 21st was the first day I started painting on the wall. The first step was to measure and sketch a grid made up of 4 ft x 4ft sections. On my sketch for the mural, I had laid out a 1 in x 1 in grid, so this helped me enlarge the drawing onto the wall.

Friends came to help:
They helped me measure out each grid square (Annie):

Figure out how the heck to work the scissor lift (Isaac):

And of course keep hydrated (Erin):

The lift goes 32 feet high:

I had to re-measure the drawing because of the windows:

First stroke of color!

At this point, passers-by were shocked and confused by the painting, asking what I was doing and what the heck this was a painting of.... is it abstract art? Is it a rope, a chain, a big pretzel, a dragon, the large intestine? I just told them to wait and see!

The Priming Process and A History of Designs

Preparation of the wall is moving along slowly but all-too-surely.... bringing the day of the first brushstroke closer into view. The paint crew who is priming/sealing the wall washed everything down Sun June 7, then it sat untouched for a full week while we waited for storms to subside, and for Sherwin Williams to deliver the primer. Sherwin Williams donated 25 gallons of primer -yay!- but we had to wait for them to pick it up from Louisville last week and lost our one sunny day.) They started priming last Sunday, and only got a quarter done before it started pouring down again, then I stopped by Monday and two guys were up on the lift doing the rest. The primer is a masonry sealer and block filler in one, so they worked it in with rollers and brushes to smooth out the rough texture of the wall. Hopefully this will help paint to go on smoother, and save my paintbrushes from going bald. They ran out of primer, though, so we've got to get a few more gallons... and then they're going to put a coat of weather-bond-something-or-other to seal the primer before I can paint over it.

Check out the 3-story tall ladder to the right of the photo... the painters are using it to prime over the satellite dish. One of my nightmares is painting an entire mural using that ladder.

While I've been waiting for the wall to be ready, I've been refining the design. I figured it was about time I started using paint on a sketch instead of just pencil. My nature is resistant to over-planning anything, but I've had to get over that because extensive planning is what will make the mural painting process go like clockwork, and thus go quicker than if I just jump up there and start painting and making stuff up like I usually do. It's a lot more difficult to experiment and try things out on a whim with such a large scale, because it takes much longer to fix things that don't work.

This is my "studio," in the kitchen, next to the window:

The next photo is the latest of the design, although it's not yet finished. It probably never will be. There are vines stretching across the wall behind the frame, and last night Leticia had an idea for the vines to connect with the twisty golden shapes that make up the frame. So I began working on that idea late last night.

The idea is that the frame surrounds the main image of the steamboat, and in each inset of the frame are different scenes of Madison. There are 18 different scenes, and mural sponsors can choose which scene of Madison they'd like to sponsor. For example, Hanover College is a sponsor, and they chose historic Parker Auditorium as their "scene," so Parker will be painted in one of the insets. The banner underneath the painting of Parker will read "Parker Auditorium, sponsored by Hanover College."

The steamboat will be the Revonah, which was operated off the banks of the Ohio here in Madison. It's sponsored by the grandson of Captain Selby Turner, who ran the boat in the early 1900s.

Next is the painting in an earlier stage. I'm working off of a sketch I did with colored pencil:

The rest of the images below show paintings and sketches I did last summer/fall, just planning out how to work out the frame idea. I am not proud of these paintings, but you gotta go through the bad to get to the good! I included them here because they show the progression of how I got to my current design.

This one is a detail of of one of the insets, showing the Broadway Fountain:

Here I did a sketch with the general positioning of the windows on the wall of Shipley's, which I have to design around:

Early sketch of a generic steamboat:

I like this one because it reminds me of the detail work on old pirate ships or buried treasure chests... but not very Madison-esque I suppose:

If you're into raindances, maybe do a reverse one for me to chase these June storms away! Priming/prepping will hopefully be finished soon, then it will be my turn to brave the lift and paint til I can paint no more.

The first post: anticipation and intimidation

Thanks for visiting the mural update page! I created this site so my friends and family can view the progress of this project throughout the summer and fall. Click on the photographs to enlarge.

The Story:
Two years ago, the owner of Shipley's Tavern had an idea that he wanted a mural painted on the outside wall of his building. He told this to one of my business professors at Hanover College, and as I was doing an internship in Louisville with a professional muralist at the time, she recommended me for the job. The owner, Cris, and I got in touch and began brainstorming about how to go about the project. Planning got put on hold for a while as I finished school. May of 2008, I graduated from college, found a place to stay with my Studio Art professor, and started putting the pieces together to successfully complete a huge outdoor mural on a wall made of really old bricks.

Since then, during the past year, I have done research on outdoor murals and historic preservation, raised thousands of dollars to pay for costs and materials, and figured out every little detail : where to get scaffolding, who to ask to repair the holes in the crumbling wall, whose permission I need to paint an historic building, what kind of liability insurance I need, and on and on. It's been a long process. For the Most Fun prize, I would vote for throwing a benefit concert, Steamboat Songs for the Soul, where 5 of my friends' bands played music all night while everyone danced, and we raffled off a special spot on the mural, where the winner got to choose a scene of Madison to go on the mural with their name next to it. (A little boy won, and he chose the Regatta boat race.) For the Least Fun prize, I would vote for the never-ending labyrinth of insurance.

What I have mentioned here only skims the surface of all the questions, meetings, decisions, and brainstorming sessions that have happened over the past year. But as of today, the first step of the Realized Mural (meaning the mural that exists in real life) as opposed to the Theoretical Mural (the one that exists in idea and extensive planning stages only), is completed! Last Friday, I made my first monthly deposit on the scissor lift, had it delivered to the Wall, and a contractor who I hired began knocking off the loose parts of the parge coat (a layer of mortar mix that was applied years ago over the old, crumbling brick... I learned that term from my consultant, Rusty- thanks, Rusty!) and patching it. The parge coat covers the top 1/2 of the wall, and quite a bit of that section came down in big chunks. Better now than after it's painted, that's what I say! The contractor, who owns Kickin' Ash Chimney Service, used a cement/stucco mix to patch the holes up. The following photos show the fabulous job he did. Now it needs 48 hours to cure, and it'll be ready for light power-washing, then priming with a block-filler.

The scissor lift is a little intimidating. When it was first delivered, it wouldn't go up over 10-15 feet because of the incline in the parking lot. The lift has a sensor that disables it if the ground is uneven, so it won't tip over. That's a nice feature. I called the rental company and they brought me some sections of 2x4's to prop up the 2 wheels furthest from the wall. It works just fine shimmied up like that, and the Kickin' Ash contractor, David, showed up just as I was about to go all the way up for the first time. So we went up in it together, and I'm glad he was with me! I was doing the controls (it's like a joystick with levers and buttons), and we got up about 30 feet before I had to take a break.... then slowly we went up 10 more feet, and we could see up on the roof. I won't have any problems reaching the top of the wall, that's for sure. And I think once I get used to the height and the swaying to and fro with the breeze, I'll begin to appreciate the view.

If it quits raining, maybe the cement patches will dry and we'll be on to the next step! I'm itchin' so bad to start painting this mural - if I didn't care about making it last, I'd be up there right now painting it! The only reservations I have are probably these three:

1. The lift scares me a little... but not enough to admit it.

2. I need to be very focused when I paint, because every week I have the lift in my possession is another $200, and every month is $800. This is to be a timely project!

3. I can't seem to commit to a final design. Every time I come close to settling, something in my gut screams out, "Wait! It could be so many different things, there are so many different ways you could design this... and you want to settle on that?!?!"

I think I would feel differently about #3 if I'd had the chance to just jump in and paint the dang thing, but all this waiting and planning has got me into over-contemplation mode. But my dad reminded me that once I'm actually painting, the whole thing will take on a life of its own, and then I'll barely be able to hold back. It will just create itself. I'm not sure how my dad knows that will happen, because he's not an artist, he's a lawyer... but he's right. Maybe going to trial is like creating a work of art.