I spent about fifteen years of my early artistic career painting more than 125 giant historical murals across Canada and the USA. I used my pen-and-ink style to create visual stories on concrete and brick walls. This mural was painted in Sterling, Illinois - one of four in that city. The locals enjoyed watching the process, and in this case, many elementary school groups dropped by. I always took the time to chat and answer questions - especially with the kids. For this mural, I would ask the kids to tell me their first name, and I would hide it in my painting on the wall. The names are mostly in the shadows. There are more than 150 names in the dark area under the porch. A local sports store owner visited often, and as a nod to him, there is a giant NIKE swoosh just over the DRY GOODS window lettering. Many other things are also hidden through the mural as well, and I believe the mural is still there more than three decades later.
Completed at last
Having a business in your yard means we have to think things through carefully and do some creative problem-solving. We require a commercial dumpster that is readily accessible to the large truck that comes every second week to empty it. Since the parking lot adjacent to the shop is needed to stockpile finished features, we opted to put it nearer to the front of the property. But dumpsters are not very pretty, so we hid it inside a good-sized mountain/planter. Giant metal doors allow access to the dumpster. Behind that, we built a second room to house the riding and push mowers and other yard tools. Between the ‘mountain and fence is where the various recycling bins are, handy but hidden from the front of the yard. This structure has been in various stages of finish for many years. Over the last few weeks, our crew completed the sculpting of the last timbers, and today the last of the paint was polished off.
SignMedia article
SignMedia, Canada’s premier sign magazine, is celebrating its twentieth anniversary. As part of that celebration, the editor selected one article from each year to feature in this month’s magazine. The story she picked for 2011 was an article about one of our earliest dimensional signs made on our CNC router. It was exciting to discover the capabilities of both the router and software back then. That journey continues to this day! Reading the article was a fun trip down memory lane.
