For the Pianos About Town 2019 season, I had the opportunity to paint my third piano for the city, “How to fold a paper crane.” I had always loved origami growing up and wanted to make a nod to my Japanese heritage. I love that the pianos encourage spontaneous music making, so I thought combining two art forms together would be a fun take.
This is one of my favorite pianos to date and I hope that people enjoy trying to follow along with the directions.
In July, the Downtown Development Authority asked me to paint an Adirondack chair for Old Town Square. I decided to paint a mermaid because my daughter Holly loves them. The mermaid chair is a perfect addition to the splash pad in the square that lots of kids play in.
It was so much fun to paint and I’ve enjoyed seeing it out and about whenever I’m downtown. I feel so honored to have been asked to work on this project. Thanks for supporting up-and-coming local artists!
It took a little over a month, but I finally did end up finishing my koi transformer cabinet for the city. I’m really happy with how it turned out and I’m thankful that the weather cooperated during the last few weeks.
When I first started the project, it was incredibly hot. So hot that I got sick one of the days I was working on it. The following week, it was so cold that I had to wear long underwear and two coats for shorter painting sessions. That’s Colorado for ya!
I’m so thankful that I had this opportunity to create art for the city and the friends/family who supported me by visiting, bringing me cookies, and helping assist. You can see photos from the process below!
I started working on my transformer cabinet mural for the city of Fort Collins on Friday and worked through Sunday. The box is located by the Burger King drive thru on the north end of College and I made pretty good progress on my koi fish mural.
Unlike the Pianos About Town Project, I don’t see too many people. I see everyone who goes around the drive thru and I’ve talked to some of the Burger King staff. They’ve all been super nice (one of them upgraded my drink and said I could stop in for free refills to beat the heat).
The largest side of the box is about 4ftx6ft. I’ve painted large-scale paintings before (pianos for Pianos About Town and my daughters’ nursery mural), but you never quite realize how long a painting is going to take until you start it. I like to mentally visualize what I plan on accomplishing everyday, and I’m definitely not as far as I imagined. That being said, I’m still making good progress and ended in a satisfactory place at the end of my Sunday shift.
The cabinet starts off pre-primed, so it’s ready for paint. I taped off the concrete at the base of the box, grabbed my can of blue house paint, and started rolling the paint on. I was hoping that one coat would be enough for a base coat, but I needed to add a second layer. Setback #1.
Next, I sketched out the design on 3 of the 5 sides with chalk. This took longer than anticipated too because it needs to be identical to the concept sketch. Setback #2.
Setback #3 was definitely the heat. The weather was in the 90s the whole weekend, so it made for interesting painting conditions. There’s a large wall behind the box where the Burger King garbage cans are, so this helped create some nice shady spots but only during certain times of the day (and sometimes only for a few moments at a time). On the second day when I was working on the shading for the crests of the waves, the heat would make the paint dry within seconds. This made for some really interesting “beat the clock” painting sprints.
2 of the 3 days I worked, I also had shifts at Pinot’s Palette. After putting in time Saturday morning on the box and working a class at Pinot’s Palette afterwards, I ended up getting sick. I thought I was going to pass out, my legs felt like I had competed in a cycling race, and I felt slightly nauseous. I collapsed on the couch when I got home, fell asleep for about 3 hours, and finally started to feel better after dropping some electrolyte tablets into my drinking water and taking a bath. Even though I had been taking regular water breaks and wearing my big sun hat while working, the heat still really took it out of me!
On my last day of work for the weekend, I vowed I would head home if I felt heat exhaustion coming on, packed a bunch of electrolyte tablets (“it’s what artists need”), and brought some beef jerky to snack on. I got caught up on all of my podcasts and started listening to an audiobook of The Disaster Artist (hilarious so far).
I’ll be back at it again next weekend! I’m hoping I can finish all the shading on the waves next time, but we’ll see.
You can learn more about Art in Public Places and check out my concept sketch (and the other boxes for the city) here at the FCGov website.