There’s no designated thing you're assigned to with a mural this big. You do a bit of everything. However, I can give a few pointers.

If you look at the ledge which lies in the white horizontal dividing strip (there are lights on it), if you stand a person on the ledge, that’s the highest I was allowed to go. Anything from there and down, I worked on.

Some specifics, I connected the lounging king’s arm where it goes across the white comic border. The ledge warps the angles so you can’t draw it straight on. I drew some of the barrels in the tunnels of the second panel, the lounging king’s knees, arms, drapery, and the building behind. I worked on many random parts of the bridge. I did lots of miscellaneous work in the last panel.

My lead teaching artist acknowledged me for catching details we needed to fix, being precise, and having high work endurance. I arrived early every day. First or second. I came in every optional workday and stayed the whole duration of the mural process. I was the last apprentice on the team by the end of the mural.

Our Process

We began the mural by gridding the wall with rulers into equal squares. We had printouts with the mural divided into squares, organized by numbers and alphabetical rows. We hand-drew them onto the wall with chalk and contractor crayon.

We had an amazing team of 18. 1 lead teaching artist, Gypsy Schindler, and two junior teaching artists, Molly Cardosi and Tamia Saunders. Molly Cardosi took over as lead teaching artist for the last few months as Gypsy had to leave for another mural project. There were 15 main apprentices.

It was hot! Hotter than sliding down a metal slide with a bare bum in the midst of July. Gypsy was an angel at making sure we took breaks and that we felt comfortable on the level of scaffolding we were on. Sometimes she had to rip me off the wall to take a break. She also always made sure we had good snacks. A happy tummy equals a happy worker.

In the drawing process, we reoriented the design because the wall is slanted as the building is on an incline. There is also a jutting ledge where the lights are placed. For that, we looked at it from the street and slanted the drawing on the ledge to make it all look connected. Callum Rettig bit the bullet, doing a great majority of the ledge drawings. In the end, I think we reoriented the design to make the ledge blank, so all of his work got erased. But he was amazing. Ian Darcy drew the lounging king’s face and crown on both ends of the mural, and he did a dang good job. Above the ledge, the wall texture gets worse than a popcorn ceiling. It was essentially sandpaper, and when people came down, they looked like Smurfs and coal miners from their crayons turning into dust. Our shower drains endured a lot of abuse during that time.

Sometimes you could see the wall shine. It wasn’t from water. It was sweat.

When it rained, we couldn’t work; we were given the Sam Adams fermenting beer room. It’s a cool room! It also made me gag more than a few times. If you stay in there past ten minutes or so, you get a headache. Don’t breathe in too hard, or you will be gagging. Eventually, we all got used to it. Mostly. Those of us with cars were allowed to wait in there while the rain passed.

When it was finally all drawn, we filled it in with color. The teaching artists mixed colors for longer than anyone wants to. Sometimes, design and color details had to change. I got eaten alive by the mosquitoes, looking like I had a disease you get vaccinated for, but it was one of the happiest times of my life. We got to enjoy a few nice visits to Findlay Market for lunch, too, and I felt cool walking in with our paint-stained vests. Those reeked of sweat after a while.

Near August, we were pretty tuckered out. We lost nearly everyone by then to college and high school. Some people lived out of state, and others had too long commutes. Many were simply too busy. By then, the team had shrunk from 18 to about 5. That’s when ArtWorks had volunteers come in for a few hours and help out.

When Gypsy left, we kept her picture on our work table every day. One of the Sam Adams workers thought she had died because it was in a frame. On her last day, she gave us all really nice acknowledgments for what we brought to the team. She said I’m H.A.M. Which I now know means—in lighter words—works reaaaallll dang hard. I caught details we needed to fix, was precise, and had high work endurance. I arrived early every day. First or second. I came in every optional workday and stayed the whole duration. I was also the last apprentice and the only apprentice left standing by the end of the mural.

Molly took over after Gypsy, and I adore Molly just as much. She is the kindest, sweetest person I have ever met, and she kept my tummy full. Tamia had to leave eventually, too, but she would always make you laugh, and she was extremely accurate with her work.

It went from sweltering hot to painfully cold. We had a few new regular workers come in and out. From the few original team members left, we were really tired of it, and it was starting to show. My perfectionism was freaking out on the inside. Eventually, it came to be just me and Molly from the original team, and I was starting to really want to quit. Aliese Hewitt came on as a junior teaching artist and stayed until the very end, too. She took the violent cold like a BOSS. I couldn’t take its brutality some days and quit early, but somehow her fingers were still going.

At the end, I wanted to touch up all our lines below the ledge, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. Overall, it’s a beautiful mural.

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