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Behind the mural: Artist explains Cox Mill art project
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Published: August 31, 2009
Editor's Note: An abridged version of this story ran in Sunday's edition, but was credited to Lisa Pickett. The artist, Melony Kuyath, wrote the following statement about her mural.
The project began in 2002, the opening year for Cox Mill Elementary, when I came there as one of their school counselors. During the summer before the school opened, I was thinking of a number of programs that we counselors could implement that would benefit our students socially, emotionally, and physically. One of my ideas was to create a climbing wall in our gym which could be used in P.E. classes, and perhaps during some of our guidance classes where we counselors could team-teach along with the P.E. teacher to promote both physical fitness and enhance our character education program. I like the idea of purposefully engaging the "whole person" in learning... sort of like the YMCA concept of Mind-Body-Spirit.
The project evolved from a vertical wall to a horizontal, or traversing, wall with a climbing area that is only about 8 feet high, eliminating the need for ropes and harnesses, while still providing a challenge for the students as they climb the greater distance horizontally. Our P.E. teacher suggested a mural as a backdrop for the climbing wall, so I created an image representing the different regions of North Carolina, from the mountains to the coast, with a giant live oak as the centerpiece. It's like the students are climbing on a huge tree, with massive, sprawling branches. I had also researched grants and found that the Bright Ideas Grant, sponsored by North Carolina's Touchstone Energy Cooperatives, was a good fit for the project. I wrote and submitted the grant proposal, and we were very fortunate to have been awarded those funds which helped pay for the climbing holds and paint. The holds were installed and the climbing wall has been used in P.E. classes since that first year. The mural has taken much longer.
I began painting in January 2003, and I am now adding the finishing touches, six years and seven months later. That is a long time for one project, but you have to understand that there were some years when I only got to paint for a total of between two and four weeks for the entire year. I was working full-time as a school counselor at the school, my husband's job as a professor at UNC Charlotte kept him busy, as he was also working toward tenure and working on his Ph.D., and we have two teenage daughters. Life was busy. I tried to paint on Saturdays as much as I could, and that worked out all right for the first two years. After that it became more difficult to devote my Saturdays to painting the mural, and I became limited to painting on Staff Development Days, Spring Break, and a week or so at the end of the school year after students were on summer break.
In addition to time constraints, there were other factors that have had a role in making this such a long-term project. First, I had never done a project like this, and the learning curve was major! This is a BIG project! The mural covers one entire wall in the gym, 18 feet high, and about 76 feet long. Two-thirds of the wall is inaccessible from the floor without special equipment. I begged, borrowed, and was loaned scaffolds and scissors lifts to get the job done. A parent loaned us a two-level scaffold (six and twelve feet) for a few weeks one year, and one of our teachers, Celeste Black, loaned her husband's six foot scaffold to the school for the past several years, so I could paint whenever I had the chance. The school system allowed me to use their scissor-lift numerous times and another teacher, Lynn Gilmore, asked her brother-in-law, who owns an electrical contracting company, if we could borrow one of his scissor-lifts, which he graciously loaned to us for a week or two during one of my end-of-the-school-year paint sessions. Without the help of all these folks, there is no way I could have completed the job. Plus, I learned a new skill: driving and operating a scissor-lift (and I never once hit the wall or the door frame of the closet where I stored the lifts while I wasn't painting).
Working on a surface this large created challenges in a number of ways I had not anticipated. First, it was important to get the original drawing transferred to the wall properly. My original drawing was 11 inches high by 39 inches long and needed to be transferred to the 18' by 76' wall. Using an overhead projector and transparencies of my drawing seemed to be the best solution, but those projectors are not made to project an image that large, and this created a distorted, very top-heavy image of the tree's branches. So, I made the necessary corrections and adjustments, moving the projector forward and back away from the wall as I transferred the image in different sections. Anytime I had to stop, waiting weeks or possibly months before I could work on the mural again, it was very tedious to get the overhead projector back in exactly the correct position to resume transferring the image. This was especially problematic when transferring the many lines within the tree to create the bark technique.
Before beginning painting the mural, I painted a model the same size as the original line drawing, to determine the colors and techniques I would use. It's much easier and less expensive to make corrections on a smaller scale. Then I mixed larger volumes of interior acrylic latex house paints to match my palette, and stored the paints in plastic containers. There has been enough of most of the colors to complete the mural, but I ran out of the original two shades of green and had to get more mixed. I've learned that even with the computer-aided color-matching programs, getting an exact color match is not an exact science.
Another thing about working on such a large surface is that it's difficult to see if what I'm painting just in front of me works well with the rest of the mural. To check whether an area is too light or too dark, or if the technique is too large or too small, too intense or too subtle, I couldn't just squint my eyes or take a step or two back as you can when working from the floor on a smaller paint surface. Instead, I would have to come down from the scaffold or scissor-lift, walk across the gym to study the area in question, then walk back across the gym, go back up to the work area and try to visually remember exactly where, and how I needed to adjust the painting.
The work surface is a concrete block wall, which made painting more physically demanding than a smoother surface. Much of the time I had to tap and pound the paint into the pitted surface of the blocks, then go over it with side-to-side strokes to smooth and blend the paints.
Something else I learned was how the process may need to be done differently when there is more than one artist working on the piece. I wanted and needed help, and thank goodness I had a few good friends and family members who were there for me. Some were only able to give a few hours to the project, painting only once or twice, while others were able to give a good deal more, and I thank them all! Not only did they help move the project along a little faster, but they helped make it more fun as we talked and laughed while we painted. However, I learned early in the project that each person's brush stroke is as unique as their signature. At first that presented a problem because I didn't like the way an area looked when the brush strokes were not consistent. I found myself retouching and repainting those areas to make the brush strokes more consistent with my work. Since I had done most of the painting, it made sense to adjust the other work to match mine, but I felt a little guilty when I painted over someone else's work. I realized that it would probably work better if the same person who began a technique of brush strokes or blending, completed that area in order to achieve the level of consistency I wanted. I also realized that I had already begun most of those areas, and was likely to be the one who would make the greatest time commitment, so it would be up to me to complete them.
But there was one area of the mural where I had not finalized a technique, not even on the model. I decided to use a paint-by-number technique for the tree, so that anyone could help paint and the end result should be consistent enough. I painted the model, traced the lines onto the overhead transparencies, and the task of transferring the lines to the wall began. My daughters were a tremendous help with this task, as it was very tedious and time-consuming. Don't tell them I said so, but I owe them "big"! Thank goodness for them, and my Mom and friends who all chipped-in to paint the tree, which is truly the focal point of the mural. I think it is very appropriate that this is where we were all able to contribute the most. My Mom has even been to the top of the wall with me, 18 feet up on the scissor-lift, to paint the leaves and upper branches of the tree. She is where I get my artistic ability. My family has been very patient with me, and very generous with their time.
An unexpected obstacle came in the form of rotator-cuff surgery on my left shoulder in February of 2008. I'm left handed and was unable to paint for a while until I was released from physical therapy. Then, it was back to the wall as soon as I had the chance.
Although I left the school system in July of 2008 to pursue a new career in real estate with the Allen Tate Company, I had to come back and finish the mural. I just couldn't leave it unfinished. My Broker-in-Charge, Carol Lesley understood, and the company supports community involvement and volunteerism. Phil Hull and Eric Bond, Principal and Assistant Principal at Cox Mill Elementary, and the Custodial staff and Kids Plus staff at the school have all been so supportive throughout this entire process. Even the students in Kids Plus have helped. They have worked hard to play around me while I paint, and often stop to talk to me about what I'm doing. They even helped me decide to put owls in the hole in the tree instead of squirrels.
I may have done most of the painting, but so many people have been a part of the team that, truly, there would have been no mural without them. I especially want to thank my daughters, Chelsea and Nikki, my Mom, Phyllis McCarty, my fellow counselor and friend Stephanie Collins Rickaby, fellow artist and friend Amy Suleski, fellow educators and friends Jennie Henne and Celeste Black for the many hours they spent either tracing lines on the wall or helping to paint the tree, and for all their moral support and encouragement. Thank you to anyone else who may have contributed to the mural in any way, and to our P.E. teacher from that first year, wherever he is, for the idea of including a mural in the project, and for his assistance in transferring my original line drawing to the wall. And certainly many thanks to my husband, Steve Kuyath, and my dad, James McCarty, for their patience, understanding, and loving support while I was out "painting".
After I add a few birds, flowers, butterflies, frogs and such, the mural that I had never planned to paint, and that I never thought would take so long, will be finished. On to the next project... completing my mural in the children's education area at Trinity United Methodist Church in Kannapolis.
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