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May 10, 2009
Working on the Mural, Day 5
Robbi and her stalwart band of students are in the midst of day five of mural painting. Below are photos of days three and four.
For the most part, the students have been working on painting in the 50 portraits while Robbi continues transferring all of the lines and words to the wall. Robbi printed out a color template of each portrait. The template includes just the major color blocks but not the black lines, which Robbi will add at the very end.
Here is Liz painting in Charles Dickens using the Charles Dickens color template.
Slowly but surely, the various portraits are starting to emerge. (Notice the handsome portrait of Edith Wharton, the Lit House cat/mascot/spiritual leader.)
Robbi reports that the portraits on the four walls were the first to be painted. Everyone was somewhat leery of venturing onto the ceiling (where at least half of the portraits appear), as painting on the ceiling is uncomfortable, difficult, and painfully slow. Caroline was the first to take the plunge and attack the ceiling portraits.
She has been boldly painting them ever since (joined by Liz, in this photo).
Here's a long view of the room.
You may have noticed the blue stripes in the photo above. These are the masking lines that will help Robbi and the students paint the crisp gray lines that will connect the various portraits. They are slowly emerging across the ceiling and walls.
And even across doorways.
Robbi has been working from mid-morning to the middle of the night for the last five days. I get the sense that the students are starting to feel sorry for her. Yesterday, one of them baked her a cake.
And today, Caroline made her a grilled cheese sandwich.
As Robbi continued to transfer the strips of words (the phrases that link the various portraits), she worried about throwing any away, in case they might be needed again in the case of some unexpected mural-related emergency (stranger things have happened). Given that they were covered with tape, and bent, and difficult to store in any reasonable way, she started hanging them off of her ladder, creating a piece of inadvertent installation art that she has now grown somewhat attached to.
I expect to find it in the middle of the living room when I return to Chestertown.
Posted by bogenamp at May 10, 2009 06:18 PM