In Fall of 2024, I painted for the Putnam County Mural project in Bainbridge, Indiana. Shortly after I got home some months later, I came across an open call for Danville, Indiana, which was funny as the wall location is only blocks away from the family that I had stayed with while painting the Bainbridge mural. Technically, the project had 4 mural locations around Hendricks County, but having come to Danville numerous times over the years, it felt like kismet that I would apply for the wall in downtown Danville. I know that my aunt drives by the wall daily on her way home from (and to) work and that the traffic light nearby means that you (whoever you are) will always stop and have a chance to enjoy some artwork. 

The issue with this was that I had many of my own connections to the place, so unlike many other murals in locations that are otherwise new to me, I had the urge to create a work revolving around my own experiences and interpretation of the area and less so that of the inhabitants. Ultimately, I decided against this and felt that it was best to do a piece that merged the two, but it was a struggle to say the least. The decided theme? The gallery that the mural is on and the artworks of locals. I spent a month just researching all of the local artists in the area, looking through every photo that I could find of any of their works, and put together a design and composition that would create a still-life painting of all of them. I modeled and sculpted the various works in Blender, painted textures for them, and played with the lighting to get it just the way I wanted. 

And then found out that there was some small-town beef between the people runnning the gallery and the artist who created the central ceramic piece in my composition and rather than admitting it was petty, they focused on that as a potential for them to be sued for copyright infringement. As a result, they decided that they wanted the entire design changed within a month of me starting to paint and didn't want me to include any nods to artworks from local artists. Which to me was just.. heartbreaking as that was the entire concept – highlighting local artists in a painted still-life mural.

As a result, I (obviously not a sculptor) had to create new pieces that somehow retained some of the essence of the originals, though ultimately I feel as though the final artwork has much, much less soul and story behind it than the original with its varied works that bring in the creative decisions of many. The wooden vase and garden totem are replaced by a larger green vase that takes on the stripes of the watermelon and the geometric pattern of the original vase. The red and white volcano-esque vase with the goldenrod flowers is instead a red and white cylindrical vase with a spherical base. The organic wood shape was replaced with a sculptural apple to pay homage to the nearby orchard and the others were mostly just me playing with "feel" and trying to balance colors/contrast, which REALLY is not how I like to approach painting as I like the little meanings and details. To create a visual easter egg hunt. I like when I'm in the process of painting and I can appreciate and think about the little details that I added when making the concept and how they tell the story and connect this larger public work of art to a secondary (or primary but subtle) narrative. 

So shortly before I arrived to start work, I put the finishing touches on the design having modeled, sculpted, and textured all new objects in an extremely short amount of time, and arrived to find the wall to be some 20' longer than I was told, with multiple power connections running parallel to the wall and no planned shutoff schedule or protections for me (I swear, this piece was such a trial). Not to be too overcome by the seemingly neverending setbacks, I got to work tweaking the design to fit, making a prop to keep the non-power cables just far enough away from the building that I would be able to fit the basket and to get some sort of tentative schedule of when I would be able to work on the wall without having live power running around as I start from the top and work down. There were some other minor struggles with the building owners/tenants in the beginning, but only briefly, and I was afterwards able to just do my thing in relative peace. 

From that point on, I would say things went pretty smoothly. I was able to get my sketch up once we figured out a day of the week that they could have the power off and got to work with the anamorphic effect of the long wall so that when you are stuck in traffic on the street, it will appear as a continuation of the front wall as one large 3-dimensional box/room rather than unintelligible nonsense in an alleyway. As you can see in a couple of the photos, the objects needed to be distorted to the point of abstraction and it was a fun brain exercise to try to get those curves to appear smooth despite how the anamorphic nature of them over rather long distances highlights the smallest of inconsistencies. In the end, I think that the piece gained some meaning for me throughout the entire process and tells a story of the changes that seemed to test my wits the entirety of my time working on it. It still has the original nature of the light hitting the gallery wall, the objects changing and highlighting various aspects of each other and creating their own artwork on the "wall" via the shadows. It was also interesting, as it always is, to see the reactions as the artwork came to life. It wasn't at all what people expected as it's not what's generally painted for these sorts of projects, and throughout the month that I spent painting it, gave me the opportunity to have many conversations with many different people. I will say that I was saddened when the artist who created the garden totem sculpture came up to me while painting, excited that someone had told her that her work was going to be in it, only to find that I had been told to remove it. 

And to my aunt, who has lived with me for many months at this point over several projects, I appreciate you and hope that this work and our regular talks throughout its creation will be treasured for you as they are for me. Also to Anne Johansson who coordinated and acted as a liason throughout the entire process despite not being paid to do so, you're a saint and I appreciated you taking so much time to help myself and the other artists who painted for the project. Literally couldn't have done it without you.