Mural week 2021

Seven artists are creating murals in downtown Rensselaer this week. Six began on Saturday. Jessie Jennings who paints under the name of Grizzly Bear Designs is painting a large octopus on the side of Anders Water Conditioning. 

When I stopped by before noon there was only a blank wall. A couple hours later he had outlined the main design. By the evening he had colored most of it in. He works with spray paint and works quite fast.

Most of the new murals are not in an alley and some of them will be very visible to people passing through. On the building that overlooks the CVS parking lot Ian Ross has begun the largest mural of this years crop.

Ross is from San Francisco and his murals are abstract. He does not work from a fixed design so even he does not know what this will look like when it is finished. Below is the mural as of Sunday morning when the sun shows it at its best.

The Rule Auto Works building will be getting three (or four depending on how you count them) murals. The one visible from the intersection of US 231 and SR 114 is being done by Kristine Campbell who hales from the Chicago area. 

The subject is very appropriate for the building. Ms Campbell works with brushes so her progress is slower than some of the spray-can artists. When I took this picture on Sunday afternoon, a couple of guys were asking if she did murals for private individuals. 

On the other side of the building Alex Ann Allen, who painted one of the murals in 2020, was putting in long hours on an abstract design.

By Sunday morning when the sun made the colors pop in a photograph, she had filled in much of the outline. When she finished here, she will go around the corner and do another abstract design on the wall that faces the Court House.

The final mural on this building had not been started as of Sunday afternoon.

Two of the muralists were working in alleys. Cameron Moberg was working on an appropriate design on Fenwich Farms Brewing. Cameron, of course, is the person who brought murals to Rensselaer.

On Sunday afternoon when this picture was taken, there were several people sitting in lawn chairs watching him work.

The other mural in an alley was done by Rensselaer's Trent Musch who signs his work Moosy.  There are several of his works in the alley, including a purple octopus that was done for Mural Week 2020.

The picture above was taken Saturday about noon and the picture below was take Saturday afternoon.

The IU student paper had an article about his murals that you can see here.

People who attend the Art in the Alley event on Saturday had an opportunity to watch most of these murals get started.

Saturday was a busy day. In addition to Art in the Alley, there was a 3-on-3 basketball tournament in Foundation Park that drew about 20 teams. 

Each game used a half court, so there were four games being played at once.

Last week the Spring issue of Rensselaer's Municipal Power News was mailed. It had an article about new business developments and mentioned the 22,000 square foot facility that Rensselaer Plastics is building, the 12,000 square foot addition to Indiana Face Masks, and the new Rensselaer Pet Care building. It also noted that a bridal studio planned to open downtown. It will be in the Roth building.

It did not mention the expansion of Pipestone Veterinary Services, but it may be just outside of City limits.

We went blueberry picking a couple times in the past ten days. On the second time we were interrupted by a blueberry harvester.

The machine has a crew of two, one to drive and the other to watch the buckets that receive the shaken berries.

The first event of the County Fair, the queen contest, happened last week.

I have mentioned that the United Way of White County has been administering funding of non-profits affected by the Corona lockdowns. They allocated the last of their funds in June but have now received a supplemental grant. These new monies are more restricted than the original funds and cannot be used for a number of purposes including recreation, entertainment, arts, and seed grants. For more information, contact the United Way of White County.