While most Hamilton residents have seen some of the colorful, unique artwork going up on sides of buildings last summer, many don’t know just how complicated and detailed the process of creating a mural is.
We sat down with Streetspark’s coordinator, Jenn Acus-Smith, one mural designer, Taylor Welch, and lead artist and experienced mural painter Nicole Trimble, to learn more.
Getting the Process Rolling
At first, the mural design selection committee finds appropriate buildings and sends out a Call for Designs to artists.
They evaluate the designs based on their connection to Hamilton, to the specific building location, and to the quality and originality of the design.
Designs are also notable for being understandable from afar, but revealing hidden depths when approached up close, giving the viewer “a different kind of experience,” according to Acus-Smith.
Once the designs are selected, they are rendered as high-quality images to allow the mural painters to translate them from a small-scale design into a stories-high wall. Even the designing process itself is a combination of high tech and low tech work.
Welch described the many tools he used to design “Taking Flight,” a mural in downtown Hamilton. “I scanned in drawings of the birds and colored them using Photoshop,” he said. “While the hands were done with photo editing and outlining with a stylus [a method of digital drawing].”
The design goes to the Lead Artist to ready it for the painting process; Nicole Trimble shared her role at the outset of the “Taking Flight” mural. “I came up with a project plan, scheduling what we would be doing each week,” Trimble said. “I ordered supplies and did things like gridding the image and breaking it down into parts so we could transfer it to the wall.”
Challenges off the Ground
The hidden talents of mural painters might surprise you.
“Murals are probably 40% math, so if you are an artist and you think you can go to art school and not do any math, well then you cannot paint murals,” Acus-Smith said. “You have to do proportions, and you have to figure out the percentage of paint that you have to order.”
Mural painters are proficient problem solvers, be it at accepting the elements or painting around the beams of the scaffolding rig that allows them to access the wall.
“At that scale, you lose perspective of what you’re painting: an arm at 30′ tall just becomes large expanses of skin tone when you’re standing on the scaffolding in front of it,” Trimble said. “It was a lot of climbing up and down several stories to get back to look at it.”
Mural painters also find themselves getting to know people; while studio artists may work alone, mural painters spend much of their time out where people can greet them and ask questions about the work.
The Future of Murals in Hamilton
The connections to Hamilton come through in most of the murals; the designs reference everything from the paper industry, given the history of the city, to Joe Nuxhall for the sports fans, to the face of Alexander Hamilton himself.
Taylor Welch sums up the excitement of the murals well. “I think what’s interesting is that the conversation about art has changed,” he said. “Before we had the sculptures, but something about the murals is a little eye-catching, and people seem to be relating to them. I think it’s just bringing a new element to the community.”
5000 square feet of wall: The “Taking Flight” mural rose five stories tall on the side of the George McDulin parking garage. Finding smooth walls with good visibility is essential for a successful mural.
Recipe for a Mural
Novacolor Paint: The paint selected has to resist fading, and show up with great vibrancy on a variety of surfaces.
Varnish: A layer of protective varnish further keeps the mural from harm even after years of weathering.
Chalk Snapline: A method of creating perfectly straight lines over long distances that can be very difficult to create otherwise.
Scaffolding: Using a professionally assembled scaffold, mural painters climb stairs and reach around poles to get to their “canvas” of concrete. Sometimes, coverings that block the view of the mural make it quite challenging to envision the final product.