The Making of a Mural

Late this past summer I saw a call for artists to participate in the Shade Mural Festival, which was jointly sponsored by Montgomery College and Denizens Brewery on East-West Highway. I inquired about the project and thought it would be fun to enter the competition. The sponsors were asking for a mural to be painted on a panel outdoors, at the Brewery, and all in one day in September. Even though I had never done a project on that scale (they said the panels would be 8 feet by 16 feet), I decided to stretch my talents a bit and also build a team of diverse artists with whom to work.

The students I’ve met at MC are a talented bunch and the core group consisted of five of us. Ian White, a superb graphic artist, headed up the design team, which also included Brian and Mariza. I headed up the painting team, which included all of the above, plus Maro, and Ian’s mother and sister also joined us! While Ian used Adobe Illustrator, and designed images to mash up MoCo on one side and Denizen’s on the other, I sought out old leftover cans of house paints and selections from the ‘oops bin’ at Home Depot, tarps, and printouts, deciding in the end to sacrifice my old acrylics brushes to the cause.

We arrived at the site at 11 am, just as the other artists were unloading their cars and getting their assigned spots. Immediately I saw the first problem: the panels were not 8 feet by 16 feet…they were 8 feet by 12 feet. Yipes. We scrambled to re-design the design, and started to paint in the large areas of sky and buildings, starting from the outer corners, but had to think very quickly on what was going on in the middle. Within a couple of hours, the mural started taking on a life of its own, and we were really having fun with it: taping the edges, mixing the colors, painting the forms, removing the tape, fixing the lines, and so forth. Around 7 pm we realized the second problem: it was getting dark! The organizers hadn’t prepared for this, but they brought out a few table lights and a flashlight or two.   When it got totally dark, and we had to stop. Hmmm. We couldn’t see the mural any longer, and we had not completed the important details and highlights like the logos for MC, Denizens, or Silver Spring. And we weren’t even confident that the colors and shapes still worked.

We were told that our mural would eventually be put on display – but really, we have to finish it first! I’ve been communicating with the organizers and administrators to arrange a time for our team to check out the changes which are required, and then add the final touches before we can say the work is complete. It looks like we will have that opportunity in the days right before Thanksgiving. We are looking forward to that day. Watch for the next blog for details on the completion of the mural, and where you can go to see the finished work.