The McLean County Arts Center has received a grant from the State of Illinois, Illinois Arts Council, to lead twenty public workshops for a public mural to be applied to the exterior of our facilities.  This effort will create an extensive edition of painted grey-scale self-portraits by a broad spectrum of community members led by a professional artist. The outcome of these workshops would be several hundred self-portraits. These paintings, made on primed-on poly tab vinyl mural material, would be permanently affixed to our facility's exterior public space. Each portrait would be roughly 8” x10”. 

Created both in onsite workshops and at offsite locations under the leadership of paid artists, the finished works would then be collaged onto the prepared exterior retaining walls at street level.The walls are on the facility's south side. This area will soon become the organization’s public face due to an extensive renovation on this side of the facility of the adjoining park and public parking lot. 

The poly tab is a standard parachute cloth material for professional exterior murals. Like the Irving school project, these paintings would be made with a monochromatic color range using mural-quality paints designed to withstand sunlight damage. The finished paintings could be cut out to include just the heads or left in the rectangle. They are to be permanently affixed to the lower portion of the building’s exterior retaining walls using adhesive and then top-coated with a protective UV varnish, following the standards of the Philadelphia Mural Project to ensure longevity and professional appearance. About 2,000 square feet of exterior building wall will adorned with these paintings. 

Geographic Area Served: The McLean County Arts Center serves that county, which has a population of 174,000 residents. The organization seeks to expand our designated services to include Livingston County and Logan County on the north and south along the Interstate 55 line. 

Intended Outcomes: Several outcomes are foreseen. First, the somewhat formal and imposing facade of the historic 1908 building would be softened without violating the integrity of the building’s design. Second, artists would be employed to teach a professional technique that will inspire other artists to embrace more formal standards for producing exterior mural projects. Lastly, a robust spectrum of regional citizens will have made concrete their role not just as artists but also as the ‘face’ of the institution. 

Artist’s Pay: Professional artists would be trained to follow the model of the Philadelphia Mural project standards and would be paid for their time in both the training, leading participants in the projects, and the installation of the finished works.