Community Painters Turn Out for Pleasantville’s Walking Mural
News Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
By Abby Luby
It was a clear, sunny day on Saturday — a perfect setting for volunteer painters of all ages helping to create Pleasantville’s “Walking Mural” on the Jackson Alley wall off Wheeler Ave. From morning to afternoon, painters gingerly applied bright colors to outlined images of people walking, which ranged in size from 8 to 12 feet.
Community volunteers started arriving at 9:30 a.m. to choose an image and start painting according to numbered sections outlined on the wall.
“Over 70 people signed up to work on the mural,” said Stuart Vance, artist and graphic designer who, along with Pleasantville High School art department chair and art teacher Greg Nemec, created the design for the mural.
Three days before the community paint, Nemec and Vance used VR (virtual reality) goggles to import the mural’s digital design, enabling them to trace the mural outlines on the wall with thick black Sharpies.
“We loaded an image to the goggles to be able to see where the outlines of the figures go,” explained Vance. “This was essential to outline the complex parts of all the images.”
As noon approached, the sun warmed up the alley and vividly displayed the newly applied paint. Pleasantville High School senior Alison Auer was painting a very intricate pattern on a 10-foot-tall image of a man in a baseball cap wearing a Mets T-shirt.
“Mr. Nemec is my teacher,” she said. “I’ve been here a couple of hours painting — painting by the numbers can be complicated. Right now, we are getting into the nitty-gritty.”
Painting side by side with local residents were Scott Purcell and Frank McShane, friends of Nemec’s who have worked for years on numerous community murals in Philadelphia.
“We’ve worked on murals in underserved communities in Philadelphia, which was more of an anti-graffiti project,” noted McShane. “All public murals like this show how people impact their communities.”
Sprawled on a long table were several large cups of different-colored paint and a thick-paged schematic showing each figure on a grid with numbers corresponding to various colors.
“We figured we’re using about 1 ounce of paint for every 3 square feet,” Vance said. “There are 11 different sections, and we are using special paint that dries fast, is super tough, thick and gooey, and holds up under UV light.”
The mural project was the recipient of a $35,000 grant obtained by Assemblywoman MaryJane Shimsky, D-Dobbs Ferry, and was overseen by ArtsWestchester, which worked with the Pleasantville Public Art Committee (PPAC), the group that initiated the public mural project.
An open call for mural proposals was advertised for about two months over a year ago and encouraged artists to apply for funds and submit their mural designs. Proposals received from local artists and those living outside the area were viewed by a special committee made up of PPAC members and relevant stakeholders. Of the 23 artists who submitted mural designs, three were chosen. The three proposed sketches were voted on by the public, who chose the winning design by Vance and Nemec.
To initially create their mural design, Vance and Nemec photographed walkers in the Jacob Burns green room so they could later impose angular, colorful geometric shapes as backgrounds. Images include a man walking his dog, a violin student followed by a cat, and a woman pulling a red wagon with two children in tow.
By midday, Vance stood at the long table mixing paint, his hands speckled with assorted paint colors. He viewed the wall, marveling at how the images were progressing.
“It will not be completed today,” he surmised. “We’ll need at least another 100 hours, or about another two days, to get it done.”
Abby is a seasoned journalist who has been covering news and feature stories in the region for decades. Since The Examiner’s launch in 2007, she has reported extensively on a broad range of community issues. Read more from Abby’s editor-author bio here. Read Abbys’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/ab-lub2019/