I’ve been working on transferring thousands of old files from CDs to my computer and have come across many projects that have been long forgotten. One such project was a mini-golf course in China. It was to be built in a large mall. I received a series of phone calls from a gentleman there, always in the dead of night, because he never understood the time difference. His English wasn’t very good, and I spoke no Chinese, but we managed to communicate enough to get by. I was contracted to produce a set of concepts and plans for the golf. I also included many photos of current projects in various stages so they could see how we built our features. As I recall, it took a while to send enough information to satisfy them. They paid my design fee in full, and I never heard from them again. Was the project completed? I’ll most likely never know, but if my readers have come across it, I would love to see pictures!
Sterling store mural
I spent about fifteen years of my early artistic career painting more than 125 giant historical murals across Canada and the USA. I used my pen-and-ink style to create visual stories on concrete and brick walls. This mural was painted in Sterling, Illinois - one of four in that city. The locals enjoyed watching the process, and in this case, many elementary school groups dropped by. I always took the time to chat and answer questions - especially with the kids. For this mural, I would ask the kids to tell me their first name, and I would hide it in my painting on the wall. The names are mostly in the shadows. There are more than 150 names in the dark area under the porch. A local sports store owner visited often, and as a nod to him, there is a giant NIKE swoosh just over the DRY GOODS window lettering. Many other things are also hidden through the mural as well, and I believe the mural is still there more than three decades later.
Completed at last
Having a business in your yard means we have to think things through carefully and do some creative problem-solving. We require a commercial dumpster that is readily accessible to the large truck that comes every second week to empty it. Since the parking lot adjacent to the shop is needed to stockpile finished features, we opted to put it nearer to the front of the property. But dumpsters are not very pretty, so we hid it inside a good-sized mountain/planter. Giant metal doors allow access to the dumpster. Behind that, we built a second room to house the riding and push mowers and other yard tools. Between the ‘mountain and fence is where the various recycling bins are, handy but hidden from the front of the yard. This structure has been in various stages of finish for many years. Over the last few weeks, our crew completed the sculpting of the last timbers, and today the last of the paint was polished off.
