The artist population in Multnomah Village just got a lot bigger. Over 250 community members, ranging from kindergarteners to stay-at-home moms to seniors, will be moonlighting this summer as painters during the construction of the Multnomah Art Center's (MAC) lobby mural.
The 175-foot creation, entitled "Arts in the Heart of the Community," uses the painting method known as Pointillism to project a cohesive image from millions of dots scattered across the canvas.
Lead muralist Aimee Erickson, along with MAC art teachers, chose this method to allow community members of all skill levels to participate in the painting while still achieving a professional-looking outcome.
Michael Walsh, the Arts Center's executive director, said his staff had talked about doing a mural for years. "We thought it would be a good way to build community, and we wanted to change the feel of the building when you walk inside," he said.
Early last year, they finally sat down with a dedicated grant writer and last summer sent the request to the City's Regional Arts & Culture Council (RAC). RAC responded by offering a $4,437 grant; combined with a $5,000 grant from The Safeway Foundation and $2,000 from Southwest Neighborhoods, Inc., they had everything they needed to move forward with the long-awaited mural.
When Multnomah residents heard about the project last April, they began sending in drawings, photographs, and memories of their encounters with art in the area, whether they took a class in weaving or acted in a community Shakespeare performance.
Erickson, a MAC art instructor who also leads art projects in area schools, poured over the ideas with three other artists until they had a vision for the nine panels that would encapsulate them.
Each panel represents a different artistic discipline--such as photography, painting, literature, or theater--and together they follow the development of art through the ages.
The four head artists painted the outlines for the mural in muted colors, which the community artists will fill with dots in combinations of vivid colors. MAC teachers and alumni posed for many of the scenes that depict people.
"Of course, everything in the mural is also being taught here (at MAC)," Erickson said as she directed one of the first public painting sessions inside a MAC classroom July 17.
Erickson doled out paper cups of house paint (chosen for its durability) in colors like Key Largo, Day Lily, and Fire & Ice to prospective painters. After a few minutes forming practice dots on construction paper, each participant was assigned a Q-tip and an area of the painting to fill.
Lynn Lertzman, a resident of Multnomah, applied coffee-colored dots to a section that depicts a man working on a typewriter. "This place could certainly use some color," she said. "It's a beautiful building, but this is going to help a lot."
The panels will be mounted like wallpaper on the upper half of the lobby walls. This enables them to be preserved in case the layout of the building ever changes, as well as creating a better angle for viewing the painting as a whole without noticing the tiny dots that compose it. After Erickson and her team put the finishing touches on the mural, they will tentatively unveil it November 6.
While most of the 13 sign-up days to work on the painting have been filled, three "drop-in" days remain when anyone can paint: Thursday, August 6, from 3:00pm to 6:00pm; August 7, during First Friday, from 5:00pm to 8:00pm; and August 15, during the Multnomah Days Festival, from 11:00am to 3:00pm. For more information, contact the Multnomah Arts Center at 503-823-2787.
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