By Gail Parsons

Special for the Effingham Herald

When Lindsey Gerow started Effingham Artists last year, she aimed to make art visible. She accomplished that goal with the completion of a mural spanning the entire side of Guyton Antiques and Collectibles.

“For years now, I've been advocating for that in different programs and in different ways,” she said. “There's nothing more visible than a colorful mural in a historic downtown.”

Over the course of several days, the plain white wall at the intersection of Highway 17 and Third Avenue came alive with a vision from the past. The 20- by 40-foot wall now sports a painting of a train and the old Guyton depot.

A professional artist, Gerow prefers working on large canvases and has painted several interior murals, but this one is the largest project she has ever undertaken as well as her first exterior wall. And it combines her enthusiasm for art with her passion for history.

“It ties into my personal mission to create Effingham Cultural and Historical Alliance, where the visual arts and the history and culture can all come together and really create connections in our community,” she said. “I want to connect the dots between them. All these wonderful resources are there, but they're hidden gems.”

Her belief that people will embrace art and history was validated by the number of people who stopped while she was working to share stories and photos related to what she was painting.

“It's a recognizable artifact,” she said. “People were stopping their cars and saying, ‘I remember when the roundhouse was really here. I remember when the train depot was really here.”

People brought her old photographs, and one gentleman even showed her blueprints of the building. Seeing some of the photos of the train that pulled up to the Guyton depot resulted in her changing her original design so the mural would be more authentic.

“The photograph that I referenced, you can see both doors for the segregated waiting rooms, which I find fascinating and heart-wrenching at the same time,” she said. “To include that in the artwork, I think it's very important because it has that history, that dichotomy.”

Although the painting is based on a historical landmark, Gerow’s style is reflected.

“Because I'm a commercial artist, I accept commissions, and my commissions are pretty photo-realistic with a sense of bright, fun color,” she said. “I like to use invented color. You'll see in the mural, there's purples and blues in the shadows. That would not be realistic. But I think that including that playful color really shows my personal style.”

 

The process

The success of her first large-scale, exterior mural added fuel to a spark, which Gerow said she hopes will lead to more public art throughout Effingham County. But this kind of project can only happen with collaboration.

The Guyton depot mural started with a conversation she had with Miller Bargeron Jr., chairperson of the Guyton Downtown Development Authority.

“We were introduced over the summer when I started Effingham Artists, and he brought the idea of painting a historical mural for the city,” she said. “I think painting murals with context is incredibly important for placemaking. A lot of times when a mural is conceived, it's just something to add to the beauty of the area or to make it a landmark. But with this, this is to capture the spirit of the area.”

When it came to executing the project, the first step was to prep the wall. For that, Ryan Work, owner of Soap and Hose LLC donated his services to pressure wash the cinder block wall.

“That was a huge help,” she said. “I would have liked a commercial paint company to paint the primer, but we're doing this as a public service for Guyton, so I primed it myself, just using my home paint sprayer. “It was a thirsty wall. It took two full gallons of paint for the first coat.”

There were also large holes in the wall that needed patching. Once the wall was cleaned, primed, and patched she used a grid system to sketch the design on it.

“It was so much fun,” she said. “I drew a grid on the design digitally, and then I used a projector to project my image on the wall. We had to do it at night. So, from eight to 10 one Sunday night, my business partner Adrian Webber and I went out with the projector and traced out the big shapes. That was super fun.”

With her experience, the scale of the painting wasn’t the challenge, rather it was the logistics of the project, she said.

“For instance, my ladder wasn't tall enough to reach the top of the building, so I had to get really creative with a paint roller on a stick,” she said. “Another challenge is the ground’s not level right there.”

Humidity and temperature also slowed her down several times as she was trying to get the painting completed during a colder-than-normal December.

Now, with lessons learned from this mural, Gerow is hoping to see more blank walls around the county filled with murals.