Lakeland PBS presents Common Ground, brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Production funding of Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community, Member FDIC.

[Music] [Music] Welcome to Common Ground.

I'm Producer/ Director Scott Knudson.

In this episode, the city of Park Rapids replaces an aging mural with a new work by Lili Lennox that depicts Park Rapids throughout the year.

I am LuAnn Hurd-Lof, program coordinator for the Park Rapids Downtown Business Association.

I was approached, we the organization was approached, by a new building owner who was interested in having a new mural on the north facing wall of his building downtown.

So I worked with him and was manager of the project.

Well, I'm Vicki Bender.

I am an artist in the Park Rapids community.

I am a member of the Heartland Arts Council, and it was because of that that we were asked by the city to consider having a new mural painted on the north side of Aunt Belle's Candy Store, and the owner at that time, was new owner Ray Carlson, had requested it.

The former mural that was there had been there since 2005, and the paint was deteriorating and it was time for a new vision from Main Street.

The Downtown Business Association members, we talked about it at several meetings, and they embraced it.

Park Rapids downtown, and it's Main Avenue, it's not Main Street.

Believe it or not.

But it's unique because there's parking in the middle of the street and many people, you know, when the streets were redone they said well we should do away with it.

But no.

There were sufficient people who said no we want to keep that, and it works.

You just have to be careful.

Downtown Park Rapids is thriving and vibrant and we wanted a new mural that would say that.

We have a lot of new business owners, they're diverse.

Of course we're best known for our center street parking, and now we're also well known for our flowers in the summertime.

There are so many different types of businesses that are unique.

For instance, the candy shops draw a lot of people.

There are salons, beauty salons.

There's any type of merchandise that you want.

There's a place where they will print t-shirts for you or make special caps and so forth.

It's Good Life and Necce's and a few others around.

Bella Caffe and and 3rd Street Market, those are unique, and bookstores, locally owned bookstores, as well as others.

There's The MinneSoda Fountain, and there's the yogurt shop right next door, and of course now there's Revel Brewing.

Now we have quite a few restaurants downtown, so there's choices of places to eat and kinds of food that you want might want to try out.

And we have a wonderful, new Mexican market that's very fun.

So people enjoy just strolling around downtown and visiting shops and revisiting shops that they've been in before.

I think people just like the atmosphere.

Everything's different, and the storefronts, you know, they aren't all the same, and it brings people in.

Our original mural, well it wasn't the original actually there was one before that, that some students had painted on the wall and then in 2005 that was replaced with a very, very large loon and it said Park Rapids Downtown above the loon.

But it was faded and peeling and no longer very attractive and that's why the new building owner was interested in having it replaced.

Well, you know, what I remember is that big loon on there, and it was time, it was time for a new vision.

And that, you know, this was 2019 that we brought this forward.

So you don't expect a mural to last forever, and it's okay to paint something new.

There's nothing wrong with that.

In preparation for the new mural the building owner, it's a stucco wall and it needed some repairs, and they had the repairs made and then he had it sandblasted and cleaned it up and peeled off the old mural paint.

And when we were thinking about a new mural, the Downtown Business Association was instrumental in saying they wanted us to show something about downtown.

So that's what helped us set a pathway for the artist as to what it was that we wanted to do.

In preparation for the new mural, we asked the local Lions Club to be a part of this, and they said yes.

And it just so happens that my husband is one of the members, and he sort of volunteers me, too.

But we had several people who came and worked.

In fact, two of our grandkids were there and helped do some painting.

So they got that experience, too, and that's a big wall.

They even had to bring a lift so that they could paint the very top.

And as the Lions Club was painting over the old mural, people driving through McDonald's for pick up and orders, they were cheering that it was being covered up.

So that was fun.

That wall soaked up a lot of paint.

The Park Rapids city planner at that time was the one who approached us, and he knew of an individual who had painted a mural in Finland, Minnesota.

He had a photo of that mural, and not that we didn't want to accept that individual right away, but we began to talk about it at Heartland Arts.

And I said, "You know, if this is a new mural, we want to have something that's really fine quality, that people will come and they will admire it.

They'll go over there for a photo op.

They'll use it in many ways."

And so that's when we began searching and sending out feelers for other people who had done murals.

I believe that for that mural we received five proposals.

And then we met again and narrowed them down to Lili Payne at the time Lili Lennox.

Well, it was Lili Payne Lennox.

She was married two weeks before she started the mural.

But she was a wonderful artist who came here.

I had an opportunity to meet her and talk to her about the town.

Just Ray and I were there that day that she and her fiancee came.

She was very approachable.

She was very interested in small towns and very capable.

Congratulations on your recent marriage.

Oh, thank you, thank you.

May I be as so bold to ask who have you married?

I've married a man named Travis.

Hi.

Congratulations.

Lili Lennox is a wonderful artist, muralist, professional muralist from Minneapolis.

She's done numerous public art commissions and public murals.

So this was our first mural project.

It was a joy to work with her.

She worked very well with our committee and this was all on Zoom mind you.

This was the winter of 2020 that we were working on this project.

When we started we weren't just sure what it should be, so we asked her for some ideas.

And the first couple of illustrations she sent us weren't exactly- so we had to fine-tune what it was we wanted.

We had come up with this kind of idea for an original design, and she did pretty much what we asked her to do.

And when we saw we all said no that's not gonna work.

That's really not what we want.

And she was so wonderful and we brainstormed some more.

So we talked about okay, what goes on downtown during the year?

What's different?

So immediately people were throwing out ideas about for one thing the Christmas tree lighting is a big event.

Second Street Stage is a big event.

Fourth of July is a celebration, and we just wanted to make them realize that Park Rapids doesn't fold up in the wintertime.

I sent her a summary of our brainstorming ideas and then she came up with what eventually was pretty much the final design, and that was to depict the four seasons and different activities that take place downtown all four seasons of the year.

The community organization that hired me had some ideas of the type of, they knew the message they wanted to send which was to tell people that the downtown is open and vibrant and has a lot of things to offer.

And especially to the people who are passing through because it's, you know, such a high tourist area.

So, they specifically said they wanted a mural that was painterly, or to me what that means is like less tight lines, a little more looseness, something that an artist is sort of speaking into as they're working on it as opposed to something that is graphic designed and, you know, clean and perfect.

And which is why we're doing all of this with rollers because there's a nice, like, separation that happens between your hand and the roller.

So you have a little less control but in like a really good way, so it's not so perfect.

And I think, especially for a mural, that's a really nice, really nice effect because you're never looking at it really up close.

You're always far away and a lot of those imperfections sort of just blend together from a distance.

So and it's fast which is great for working outside.

That was the thing that impressed me about her because she didn't didn't take it the wrong way when we said well what you first showed us, that's not going to work here, you know.

I mean we approached it with finesse because artists have their own ideas, but she was very willing to go up and beyond.

In fact, when we were talking about the background color, I thought that was really interesting.

She sent us several renditions.

So we had several different colors.

So then our group had to get together and say I like that color.

No.

Oh I like that color better.

I like, you know, how it makes you feel.

Well, those of us who like the blue color won out.

This is what happens when you put a microphone in with a group of painters is that everyone suddenly becomes quiet.

Yes, we have all worked together for many years.

I knew Sarah when she was in college.

I've known Tina since we were both in our early 20s, and I met Annie somewhere along the way there.

They're great.

I couldn't ask for a better team of painters.

I mean, you can tell there's not much direction that I have to give them.

It's just you give them a picture, and then they just go, which you couldn't ask for much more as someone who runs a mural.

And we all came from painting in the theater.

So we did backdrops for many of the professional theaters in the Minneapolis area, and that's where a lot of us met.

So painting a big mural is not so different from painting a theatrical backdrop, other than it's going to last for a couple of decades as opposed to the single run of a show.

It was very exciting to see that group of women come.

There were four of them.

To be there and see them wielding those big rollers and to make it look, look so beautiful, because the finished product is really, really nice.

Hey Annie, that color that you're using, can you, before you put it away or be done with it, can you make sure some of that gets into the darkest areas of this tree?

Like we have the base color there, but if we just lifted some of the deepest tones or the deepest areas which are mostly around the lights I just put in there, just if we just brought them up.

Well we're going through color by color, and everybody's got a different color.

So we're just sort of using our rendering as a little map and that's actually working pretty well.

Everybody's moving through this real quick, and then we can go through at the end and tighten everything up and add details where we want details.

People at dinner.

Isn't that nice?

During the pandemic, since it was, yeah we were all pretty much on lockdown, we decided this was one art project that could proceed during a pandemic.

The mural painters, well Lili worked with a crew, that worked really well, and it was an art project that could happen during a pandemic, unlike vocal performances and other kinds of activities.

And she did a wonderful job protecting them.

When they were painting the mural we had barrier tape, so that people wouldn't approach.

Oh can you also tell them that we we all got tested for Covid-19 so we could be a pod?

Okay.

Yeah we decided to all stay at an Airbnb when we were here, sort of get everybody together, and because we'd be staying in close quarters we agreed to get ourselves tested for Covid so we could put everyone's mind at ease about being together for this amount of time, and we all tested negative and so we're all spending time like it was 2019.

It's been great.

I'm surprised it's going this quickly.

I'm very happy it's going this quickly, but I guess I shouldn't be so surprised when I have, you know, how many years of experience between the four of us.

Tina and I have probably both been working for more than 15 years.

The new mural depicts all four seasons and activities.

It includes, for example, our tree lighting that always happens the Friday after Thanksgiving.

We have the downtown businesses put on what we call a yuletide sampler, and they put out food and cocoa and treats and people wander from business to business, and then we all gather on Main Street and do a fundraiser for Hospice.

So a family who's used the Hospice Services during the year is honored, and Santa arrives on the fire truck, well, behind the fire truck.

And we sing Christmas carols.

It's a sing- along.

And then the tree is lit.

They do a countdown and the tree is lit for the year and it's just beautiful and that tree stands right in the middle of our Main Street.

And, well, we used to describe it as a Norman Rockwell moment, and now everybody's saying it's a Hallmark movie moment, but it's a very, very fun evening.

So the tree is the winter scene in our four season mural.

My favorite parts of this mural...

I think, you know, we've started doing, adding these little black sort of black lines on everything.

I went through, and that's not in my original rendering but I'm really liking how it's creating some really high contrast between all the colors.

And I think that's really effective because, you know, murals should be, are generally viewed from a distance, so you want some high contrast to really bring out the shapes of what's happening, and I think that was a good choice and it sort of is providing a bit of like playfulness with the overall design.

And I think that's really nice, too, because it shouldn't be too serious, you know.

Like this one especially should just have a little light and lift and bounciness to it, and I think adding those little blue lines were really the thing that kind of pushed that over.

Now with this style is it possible to do too much?

Oh, is it possible?

It's never possible to do too much.

All right.

That's not true.

Yes, it's possible to do too much.

My dad always told me from when I was a little girl and I was like coloring and painting he'd always say, "Lili, you need to know when to stop."

And that was really good advice because especially with murals this size, really tiny details, no one's ever going to see them, so it is important to know when you're getting too small or the details are too micro that it's not effective viewing from a distance.

So then the time isn't worth spending on those little details.

So yes, you can do too much.

You should know when to stop, and you should know when you've hit all the marks, you know, and sometimes that point comes along a little sooner than you think.

So you should be ready for it when it's there.

Make it a present.

That made it a present.

Do we know what this is, this mass?

Is that a shopping bag?

Here it's more solid.

Solved.

I don't know.

I like color.

I want things to be bright.

I want, I want it to be arresting.

So really you just kind of start, and then start adding colors that you think are going to work well.

I chose them because I like them, and I like bright.

Yeah choosing a palette that went through both time and season...

It was actually, you know, it's better from a painting a mural perspective to limit the palettes down, which was great when I'm, you know, choosing all of these different seasons and times that I can, you know, these colors can reappear across the mural which then also gives it a more unified look, ultimately.

Well, see, that's the thing about Lili.

She has the knowledge of what you have to do to make something look right far away.

And, you know, when you're on the highway and you drive in, you aren't up close and personal.

So she has finessed that, very much so.

I'm thinking we might be done at the end of today, and then we might go out for breakfast in the morning.

When I look at the mural, it would make me curious about what else is going on downtown.

So this project was a result of funding from the Region II Arts Council Legacy Funding.

We received a Legacy Grant, and we also received some donations that made this mural possible.

All the paint was donated by Jeff Cwikla at Cwikla Ace Hardware and Benjamin Moore.

I hope that it entices people to not just drive down 34.

But I think that it gives people a feeling that, you know, there's music, there's art, there's many other things that happen here.

But that when they see that they say, "Hmm... this city has something to offer.

There's more to it than just the roadway."

Because especially for a place like Park Rapids that has a large tourist draw, you know, colorful public art is a great calling card for the community.

And they're really popular in urban areas, but I think more rural areas really need to kind of capitalize on public art like this because it gives a personality right away.

But, in fact, if you look carefully there is a loon on that picture.

And that's because Ray Carlson's wife wanted there to be a loon somewhere.

Somebody else I want to mention is Hendri Ernst.

He's owner of the Smokey Hills Outdoor Store.

He had a GoPro camera and the idea that we could film the mural being painted and loaned us all the equipment, did all this for nothing.

And then it was filmed all five days, and then when that was done he edited down to about a three-minute video, I believe.

And it's just so fun to watch because you could see the artists all working.

Oh, I hope people just sort of enjoy the colors and that it's happy and it's fun and it's a reminder of a lovely community scene.

I think I would just be happy that the people who live here and the people who are coming through town are, I don't know, just get a little sense of unexpected, you know, vibrancy and color and a happy time.

I think that's what I'd like people to get from it.

Yeah.

Well, you can find me online at gildedlili.com and see other images of murals that I've painted.

And I am available for murals all over.

Thank you for watching.

Join us again on Common Ground.

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Production funding of Common Ground was made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community.

Member FDIC Common Ground is brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money by the vote of the people, November 4th, 2008.

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