My Life on the Small Screen

This morning I caught up with some tv shows that I had taped last night, among them the NBC comedy Parks and Recreation, which has become a solid part of that Thursday comedy block. The plot of last night's episode involved the various government departments in the small fictional Indiana town where the show is set competing to design a new mural for the town hall. (the old mural is a WPA era painting filled with violent and racist images and frequently vandalized because of it) The various employees of the Parks and Rec department come up with ideas for a new mural, then debate and vote on which will be the one they submit. None of the ideas are any good (my favorite was from April the college intern- involving such items as rats, a video screen showing a continuous loop of knee surgery, and a human sized hamster wheel complete with a fat man screaming and eating raw beef), and no one will support anyone else's proposal. They decide to compromise, taking a little piece of everyone's and submitting the odd combined image. In the end the town decides they can't afford to hire a muralist to paint a new mural and will just maintain the old one.

Many aspects of the episode reminded me of my own experiences with creating public murals in recent years. Back in 2007 we decided that the long blank walls of Boatworks, the headquarters for the Belmar Arts Council, would be perfect surfaces for public murals. The question was what to paint. Quite a few people came to the first meeting with ideas, and several of those (including me) put together full proposals. In the end we chose the two designs seen above, the water scene in 2007, the postcard in 2008. Neither was among the most artistically ambitious proposals (we had one that rivalled April's proposal in complexity, including groups of mannequins, though nowhere near as disturbing), but ones that would have broad public appeal. And they have, leading to a lot of interest around town to have us paint more of them. Though, like the tv show, getting the money to produce them is another story.