Sunday, July 12, 2009 9:51 PM CDT
Mural artist bringing outdoors inside with mall wall paintings
By CHRIS ESSIG, Staff Intern
MATTOON — White-tailed deer, monarch butterflies and a body of water resembling Lake Paradise will soon have a permanent place inside the Cross County Mall.
Don’t be alarmed, though. The wildlife is merely being painted and will appear on the mall’s four-panel mural that is hoped to be installed by December.
The project is the mastermind of California artist Dave Gordon, who is also working on the city’s midtown mural, located on the west side of the D to Z Sports building on Broadway Ave.
It is also the second project of the Mattoon Mural Arts Project.
Because Gordon has set a deadline of Aug. 29 for the midtown mural, most of his efforts are on his first project.
But two of the mall mural’s four panels are 60 to 70 percent done.
One of them resembles an average store facade, with a security door rolled up revealing not the inside of a department store but instead the great outdoors with two deer and wild prairies. Gordon based his painting on images he took around town.
“(The mural) is very Mattoon specific,” he said.
The other panel features a female surfer opening a glass door to soybean and corn fields. Around the door, Gordon painted the same window structure as the mall’s InHome Medical store, also giving the panel a store-front feel.
“It has to complement the environment,” Gordon said.
Bringing the two together will be paintings of monarch butterflies on both. The panels will sit on either side of the InHome Medical entrance.
The third panel, featuring kids jumping into a lake, will be installed next to J.C. Penny. The last panel will show a child swinging freely from a rope and will sit next to Maurices.
The differences between Gordon’s two mural projects are vast, with the most obvious being that the midtown mural is one body of work while the mall mural is four.
Gordon considers the mall mural “site-specific,” unlike the midtown mural, which was a “big-theme” mural based on how the community and Gordon viewed Mattoon.
With the mall mural, Gordon wants residents to feel like they can “step into the outside world,” and move freely “from one place to the next.”
The sizes of the paintings also vary greatly.
The midtown mural is located on the sporting store’s 3,500-square-foot wall. The mall mural’s four panels range from 26 by 16 feet for the largest to 14 by 7 feet for the smallest.
Instead of painting on the walls themselves, like Gordon is doing for the midtown mural, he is working with non-woven polyester, which will then be installed on the walls.
“It will last forever,” Gordon said of the material.
Gordon also elicited the help of students from the Mattoon High School who finished separate paintings of people to be hung around the mall.
The students took 200 pictures of residents and picked two to paint. About a dozen students worked on the paintings in class and after school, said Janahn Kolden, art teacher at the school.
“The kids think its neat that they get to work on artwork that the whole community will see,” she said.
Another difference between the two projects is the source of funding.
Unlike the midtown mural, which is funded entirely by the Lumpkin Family Foundation, the mall mural’s $25,000 price tag is being covered by funds from the Broadway Avenue East business district, which includes the mall.
Funding is mainly generated from a one percent sales tax collected from mall businesses since last July.
The sales tax is set aside for improvements inside the district.
It took the city council three separate votes — two in favor and one against — to approve the funding, with the last one coming in mid-April.
The mural is part of the city’s larger effort to renovate the Cross County Mall, a project that would cost an estimated $4.5 million.
“Malls that are competing for business want to create an environment that is comfortable, friendly, invigorating and bright,” said Justin Grady, chairman of the Mattoon Mural Arts Project. “(The mural) is another tool to do that.”
Other mall renovations include: a new fountain, a sky light, new flooring, new ceiling and restroom work, said Brett Stillwell of ASD Architects who is overseeing the project.
“Our hope is to have a majority of it done by the end of the year,” he said.
If this is accomplished, Gordon could get his paintings installed just in time for the busy, holiday season.
“It’ll be my Christmas present to the town,” he said.
Add your comments
Not already registered?
Then click Here.
Comment policy:
JG-TC.com encourages readers to engage in civil conversation with their neighbors. Comments that are submitted are not posted to the site immediately. They go into a queue to be moderated and may take several hours to be reviewed. Comments posted on Saturday may not be reviewed until Sunday afternoon.
In order to keep the page a set width, long lines (mostly long links) will be chopped. Try putting spaces in your links or consider using tinyurl.com to make a smaller link that you can include.
We will never edit or alter your comments, but we do reserve the right to remove comments that violate our code of conduct.
No comment may contain:
* Potentially libelous statements; such as accusing somebody of a crime, defamation of character, or statements that can harm somebody's reputation.
* Obscene, explicit, or racist language.
* Personal attacks, insults, threats, harassment or inciting violence.
* Commercial product promotions.
If you have any questions, please contact our moderator.
|
|
|
|
|
Rohn Gordon wrote on Jul 11, 2009 9:37 AM:
1st a female surfer opening a glass door === In Mattoon??
2nd The third panel, featuring kids jumping into a lake,==Swimming not allowed in Lake Paradise.
3rd If it was anything like Lake Paradise you would see only weeds. "