The Mural Site - Good
The Roger Reiman mural site has been selected by the planning committee and assigned to us. The site has several positive things going for it.
The building we will be painting on is located just a few blocks south of the Reiman Harley-Davidson Dealership in Kewanee, IL. Roger's Father Hank, started the dealership back in 1948 and it is now owned and operated by Dennis and Dianne Packee.
The close proximity of the Reiman Mural to the Dealership will allow visitors the opportunity to ride down the street and shoot photos of their bikes in front of the completed Reiman Mural. The building is located near a parking lot, which provides access directly in front of where the mural will be positioned.
The wall provides an area large enough to create a mural in proportion to Roger Reiman's life achievements. Being a mural painter, I am always looking for the largest "canvas" I can find. Then I have to remind myself that I only have 3 or 4 days to complete this mural?
One of the perks of this wall is the direction it is facing.....away from the sun! The mural site faces North in this case, so we will be out of the sun for most of the day, while we paint. Having a North facing wall also adds to the lifetime of the final painted finish. The mural will be out of the harsh UV rays of the sun for most of the day, extending it's life span dramatically!
The Mural Site - Not So Good
On our first visit to the wall, we noticed some issues with the stucco surface. There were areas with loose paint and visible cracks.
These types of defects tend to develop into more serious problems, sometimes fairly quickly. Since we want our hard work to last as long as possible, we had to consider our options for this site.
Professionally refinishing a wall this size can be quite expensive. A newly finished wall also needs to properly cure before applying the painted mural. The other alternative is to install panels to the Wall, which we can then paint the mural on.
The panels are constructed from sheets of a substrate called Aluminum Composite Material(ACM), which are attached to a welded aluminum support structure. I will cover this process in more detail, in a future post.
The Mural Site - How Big?
Next big question, just how big should we make this mural?
The overall wall size is: 50' - 2" wide X 26' - 10" tall.
Some things to consider before determining overall panel size and placement. Cars will be backing out of the stalls in the foreground, so we want to install the panel high enough above ground level to avoid bumper damage. If we try and utilize the large area without windows, we will need to use lifts to paint most of the mural. Need to work around wires on the end of the building or relocate them? Have to keep the sheet size of Aluminum Composite Material in mind to reduce the amount of construction time, cost and waste.
Originally the organizers of the event decided on a 300 sq. ft. size for each mural site. As I mentioned in a previous post, I will be co-leading this project with Ted Turner, so we need to double the size if possible.
After considering the above factors, we decided to do a long horizontal panel that will fit just below the windows. The horizontal layout will leave a lot of negative space above the main panel, so I will come up with a solution to this dilemma in the next post!
Here is what we are thinking for mural size and placement for the main portion of the mural.
The grey lines inside the panel represent placement of the individual 4' X 8' ACM panels.
Next up, we will look deeper into the design for the Roger Reiman Mural Concept, and what we can do with the negative space above the main panel!
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