Northwest MuralFest is rapidly approaching
By Cole Goodwin
The Northwest MuralFest is rapidly approaching!
The five day event, in which 16 new murals will be painted in downtown The Dalles is set to occur August 24-28th.
The festival will also include live music, a variety of food vendors, crafts, and other family-oriented activities.
On Saturday, August 27th at 7 pm there will be a “Paint the Night” Auction Gala at the Civic Auditorium (323 E 4th St.) in the upstairs ballroom to raise money for the future preservation of murals in The Dalles.
Robust appetizers will be served, followed by a dessert auction. Live auction will feature artwork and artist personalized objects related to the MuralFest. Tickets are $30 and are available on EventBrite as well as Klindt's Bookstore (315 E 2nd St.) and ACE Hardware (500 E 3rd).
This community art festival project is in collaboration with The Walldogs, a well-known group of highly skilled sign painters and mural artists from across the globe.
“For nearly 30 years, they have helped small towns paint their past, turning blank spaces into colorful, handcrafted works of art that depict local history,” read a MuralFest press release.
“Murals offer a unique opportunity to share a community’s history through visual storytelling. They are an effective medium to foster community, enhance aesthetics and boost tourism,” said Peter McKearnan, lead artist for the Northwest MuralFest.
The MuralFest is still looking for volunteers to participate in the event.
To sign up to volunteer, paint, donate or become a sponsor, please visit the Northwest MuralFest website at www.northwestmuralfest.com. To learn more about The Walldogs at www.thewalldogs.com.
On the fence about volunteering?
Read this story about the power of making art together from local volunteer Amber Tilton. She said she greatly enjoyed her experience participating in painting with the Walldogs, even as someone who “can’t even doodle.”
Photo Credit: Amber Tilton
Painting Blanche
by Amber Tilton
“We are born into this world like a blank canvas. And each person that crosses our path takes up the brush and makes his mark upon our surface. So it is that we develop… But we must realize there comes a day that we must take up the brush and finish the work. For only we can determine if we are to be just another painting, or a masterpiece.”
It didn’t occur to me as I stood staring at the larger-than-life sized woman partially painted on the side of an old motel in The Dalles, Oregon, that this moment was the convergence of our paths. Nor did I have any inkling that this moment would make any stroke of difference in my life. It was just another sunny Saturday morning in my small community, and this was just another mural to be added to the list of ghosts in this town.
I was ready. I looked the part too, with my scuffed-up steel toed boots, lightly-torn Carhartt bibs already splashed with rainbows of dried paint and my favorite stained alien t-shirt, faded from black to gray after many years of wear and tear.
As I wrote my name on The Walldogs’ volunteer sign-in sheet already ringed with coffee stains, the lady standing next to me, her gaze fixed on the portrait above, asked “Did you know her?” This quite surprised me. I had just assumed that the life taking shape before me on the wall had long ago passed.
Yet here I was, now pondering if by chance, I had met this woman we were now memorializing. Her blood next to me, with tears, smiled dry as she watched the palette of artists sweat over what shade of brown her great aunts’ eyes were.
It was endearing to watch these strangers agonize with care over the subtle difference between brown and hazel. We bare silent witness as the process poured out of tiny cups before us, our coffee steaming in the cool autumn air. Little sticks stirred brown with green and in our being here, I sensed the past being blended with the present. Our purpose, a new shade of now.
I admitted I didn’t know her. And despite death, her kin formally introduced us. What was just a silhouette of subject matter to be transposed on a wall, suddenly became Blanche McGaughey, the famous cowgirl who toured with the 101 Wild West show.
Just then someone handed me a brush and I was drawn away to my future in slow motion, listening out of the corner of my mind’s eye as she told tales of Blanche’s bronc riding adventures to the constant revolve of curious people around her.
I must have looked too much the part because the other muralists thought I was one of them. However, my bib overalls were just hand-me-downs and my work boots were not “authentic work boots” as I imagined only real artists had. Only the glow-in-the-dark alien t-shirt was mine, proof of how I felt just then.
Photo Credit: Amber TIlton
With a dry brush in hand, I panicked and immediately told the seasoned paint-slinger, giving me what he considered simple instructions, that I had zero experience in this world of paint. I can’t even doodle. The task was to dot certain areas of a pattern and I quickly decided this was not the best job for me. I didn’t want to accidentally dot the wrong pieces.
He looked at me puzzled but we moved on to the next option; paint in a bubble. I could do that. Light blue in little cloud bubbles that adorn the corners and look like fancy tacks holding Blanche’s picture to the wall.
And so, I began. Holding my breath, I picked up the brush and made a mark upon the surface. It must have been quite noticeable because the fella next to me smiled and said, “exhale when you make a stroke.”
Photo Credit: Amber TIlton
I painted the bottom left tack and then just sat there, sort of dumbstruck. Like the wall absorbs paint, I was fully submersed in the moment. The cool of morning was evaporating and I could feel the sun turning its gaze on us, as excited to see the future as we were to be in it.
My inner self emerged from her normal routine to listen intently and with new eyes. I moved over to the mixing table and examined each item, wishing I knew what to do so I could make magic like they were. I liked how precisely messy everything was and the bold display of chaos it is - to paint life into an idea.
I tallied up the crew, about 10 of us, and tried to give them names I could remember, Bob Ross, Diego Rivera, Picasso, Frida, Georgia and so on. Their talent is as giant to me as the reputation of any known artist.
Music danced from the stereo adding another layer of texture to the moment. Like a steady heartbeat, people stayed in motion, the onlookers coming and going, the errand-runners bringing food and full gallons of paint, the painters scurrying up and down from one scaffold to the next. Me, snapping pictures in between, trying to capture the moment that they were trying to paint.
A black and white photo of Blanch McGaughey lay next to a pie tin of colors baking in the sun. Throughout the day everyone met Blanche as her print passed hands or people studied it taped to the wall.
Photo Credit: Amber Tilton
With each paint stroke a new story of her life unfolded as her family and friends came to visit throughout the day. The process of making a mural allows you time to really think about what you are doing as you are doing it. Each dip of color, each stroke and each brush rinse - a new question, a new revelation.
Who are you doing this for? Why? At the beginning of the day, I thought I knew, but by the end I wondered. Is it more for the present than the past? More for us than her? Murals remind us of who we are as individuals within a community. Who am I?
Presently, I was nothing but nervous as I climbed gingerly up a questionable-looking scaffold to paint around a border. I perched on the top rung; my legs shaky like a slender limb in the wind. I’ve never been on a scaffold before, so they all look questionable to me, but my peers that day scaled them like monkeys.
Brush in hand I was told “this involves some tricky technique, but you’ll be fine.”
What? Me, a novice, and I’m supposed to suddenly develop a “tricky technique.” He must have read my thoughts because he said, “Don’t worry if you make a mistake, it’s not the mural.”
It was comforting to know this stranger had more faith in me than I ever would when trying something new. His one simple sentence of encouragement gave me pause as I scanned the length of the mural and thought about what he meant. The people above and the ones below so focused on the color in front of them.
Were they as worried about making an error as I was? Have I always put this paranoid spotlight on my failures while others were seemingly indifferent to them because they were as equally consumed with trying not to make their own?
Or maybe they weren’t because in the bigger scheme of things we are more than our mistakes. And when we are truly present in a moment, as I could see they were, that’s when we develop the “tricky technique.” The understanding that our mistakes aren’t the mural.
The old sage demonstrated how to avoid a mistake in the first place. He swiped a singular, long, curved stroke, his eyes following the motion ahead of him. He handed the brush off to me and casually said, “Don’t focus on where you have been, focus on where you are going.”
Magically my perspective changed, and I didn’t need to worry about staying within the lines anymore. Instead, I watched the coming curve and followed its crisp line on the inside of safety.
The day yawned into dusk and as the light faded to dark, I was surprised when we didn’t stop. Spotlights appeared out of nowhere and we lit a bonfire. The intimacy between created and creator, now Illuminate in the night.
These folks had been here since early morning as I had, and I was exhausted. Their passion however, as passion truly does, was unwilling to expire. Yet another lesson for me to hold on to; passion in action, makes masterpieces.
The next day at sundown I went to see Blanche in all her glory to express my gratitude. She has added color to who I am now.
Photo Credit: Tom Peterson
The old sage was still there; the first person to start and the last person to leave. I watched him from a distance in the fading light, as he perched high on a scissor lift to meet Blanche’s gaze and say goodbye; readying himself to take up another brush.
Anyone can participate in painting or running the festival by registering to volunteer at www.northwestmuralfest.com.
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