Yesterday, Jen, ever faithful and super talented mural assistant, started priming my mural canvas at the Firehouse studio.
This is not canvas in the normal ‘artist’ canvas sense. This material is super tough, Polytab, which is a non-woven synthetic fabric—tough as nails—or rather, tough as a wall.
For primer we are using top of the line, super grip primer—recommended by the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program for just this kind of project.
These two sections are essentially one third of the canvas for the entire mural, which is 23 x 28 feet.
Exciting day, we started building the mural studio.
Yesterday, finally, Jen and I moved all the fascinating stuff in my new, temporary, Firehouse Mural Studio. The City of Hallowell has allowed me to work in the large second floor room in the old Firehouse. This gives me an 11 x 30+ foot wall to work on large sections of the mural at once. This is going to be wonderful—much bigger than the 10 x 10 foot largest space in my regular studio.
That wall on the second floor was lined with many glass display cases of fascinating old firehouse paraphernalia—and a lot of it heavy. In days of old they built things well. So, with permission from local historians and City powers that be, Jen and I carefully moved everything well away from the “mural” wall. It was a bit of work. But now everything is tucked safely away—ensuring that no Firehouses shall be harmed in the production of this mural.
After moving all the Firehouse stuff, we weren’t tired or anything…nope.
Last night we took a trip to the lumber yard and bought all the supplies for the temporary “mural easel”. Basically, plywood, 12 foot 2 x 4’s, screws and lots of plastic and canvas drop cloths. Today Jen and I will be over at the Firehouse building an 11 x 24 foot temporary plywood wall/easel. This will be free standing—with padded feet to protect the nice floor—and go against the large wall space we cleared yesterday.
Then I will be able to mount my mural canvas on this temporary plywood wall/easel and begin the next months of work on large areas of the Hallowell Mural.
It is an exciting day seeing the Hallowell Mural Project get to this phase—huge new mural easels are very enticing things.
