Mural Proposals

Off work today. On my list of things to do today was to call John Lustig, fellow Saluki and curator of permanent collections at Indiana State. The purpose of the call was not art related, but we got onto that subject eventually. The thing of interest- he's planning a large print exhibition in the near future and would like to feature a lot of SIU alumni, me included. More on that as it develops.

My art plans for the day were to produce a sketched proposal to bring to the BAC meeting tonight. I stopped by the library first to look through the books of vintage photos of Belmar and make photocopies of some possibilities. Not necessarily the way I wanted to go with this, but the idea of including a scene like this was very popular last week. From there I went to the Studio, lugging a bunch of art history texts with me. I had some definite images in mind, but to give myself the most options I went page by page through all the books, over 2500 pages in all, bookmarking possibilities. In this case, I was looking for paintings through history of people playing music or dancing, two subjects related to council programs. The next step was to go back through the marked pages and do quick pencil contour sketches on paper of the various figures. These were cut out and arranged, then taped down, as seen above. This concept prototype includes one from Egypt, then figures from such artists as Degas, Bruegel, Renoir, Picasso, Munch, Benton, Tanner, and Matisse. My original plan was to produce something with color for the meeting, but I ran out of time. Never got to use the photocopies.

Went straight from there to the meeting in Belmar. There were a number of proposals, all having merit. It looks like the big south wall may end up a scene that includes sky, bridges, etc (including some plywood construction) above, and a colorful underwater scene below. The advantage of this one is that the underwater part would lend itself to some community involvement. Another proposal was an extremely ambitious and interesting concept that would involve both wall painting and many 3 dimensional elements (involving mannequins and other items). Elements of that one will likely appear on the other (north) side of the building. My proposal was also well received. People like the concept, the mix of figures and movement through the composition, although the skill required would make this one difficult for community painters. Still, there is enough interest to have me do a full color rendering for next week. This would also likely be on the north side, maybe combined with some of the 3D elements. More details next week.