Thanks to Gale Whitman’s newly completed mural “Lollipoppies”, Pop Up Art Carts will be surrounded beauty for our inaugural event. Read all about it in Gale Whitman’s blog. Meet Gale this First Friday, October 2nd, 6 to 9pm @ Pop Up Art Carts, College and Mountain.

Lollipoppies to brighten Old Town bank

I have been commissioned by a bank in Old Town, Fort Collins to paint a giant mural at the corner of College and Mountain Avenues. The client is FirstBank; the ‘canvases’ are the large blank walls of the drive-thru and parking lot behind the bank, and the area is over 4000 square feet!

After months of working with bank VP Dawn Davis, I developed this Mid-Century Modern design for the mural:

Gale's design for east wall of FirstBank mural

I have titled the mural “Lollipoppies” thanks to my colleague Bob Komives who coined the term. As this will be my largest mural project to date, I’ve brought on board my friend Markell Young of The Finishers LLC to execute the painting. Markell and crew began work on Monday August 24, 2015 to prepare and prime the walls.  I will assist in transferring my design onto the surface, and I’ll be onsite as much as possible during the actual painting of the mural.

Gale's rendering of mural on FirstBank east wall

Our estimate is that the painting of the mural will take about four to five weeks.

Here is my ‘Artist’s Rendering’ of how it will look when finished. Feel free to visit the site (the southeast corner of the College-Mountain intersection) and say hello! FirstBank has installed a time lapse camera to record each day’s progress, and I will be posting photos on my Facebook page as well.

I want to give credit to the artist’s co-op that is partially responsible for this latest commission. Poudre Studio Artists was a group of artists — including me — with studios in the Art Center of Fort Collins until the building changed ownership in January of 2014. Sometime in 2013, one of the PSA members gave my name to Dawn at FirstBank when she asked for referrals of artists to design the mural she was envisioning. Thank you to that artist colleague, whoever she is!

Here is my design for the south wall:

LollipoppiesSouthNew

To see the development of my mural concept and progress photos, visit my Facebook album ‘FirstBank mural project’.

Below are a couple more Photoshop renderings I did showing how the mural will look once finished (we hope!).

Rendering of Gale's mural design on south bank wall

– See more at: http://galewhitman.com/lollipoppies-will-brighten-old-town/#sthash.d9o6bzPu.dpuf