Rural Missouri - August 2020 - 31

Painting
History
Thousands of Missourians
contribute to bicentennial mural
by Paul Newton | pnewton@ruralmissouri.coop

t started out as a novel idea. Southeast Missouri artists Aaron
Horrell and Barb Bailey were preparing to take their latest Paint
for a Cause project to the local fairgrounds. The project invites
community members to donate $1 to paint a small portion of a
larger painting with the money going to chosen causes.
"There was a newspaper article on the front page that day about
the Missouri Bicentennial program looking for project ideas," says
Barb, a Black River Electric Cooperative member. "We had done a
few of these small projects locally at the time and Aaron looked at
me and said, 'What if we did one of these on a bigger scale for the
entire state?' "
"Early on it seemed crazy," Aaron says. "We thought, as artists, we
could do it, but it was a big undertaking. We checked with Guinness
World Records on the most people involved in something like that
and 5,000 was the current mark. We thought we could beat that."
For the past year, Aaron and Barb have spearheaded the Missouri Bicentennial Paint for a Cause to create a massive mural painted
by Missourians as a gift to Missouri. To date, more than 12,000
people have painted a 2-inch triangle on the massive mural that
will, upon completion, find a permanent home in Jefferson City.
The first Paint for a Cause projects were in 2015 featuring canvases approximately 2 or 3 feet on either side. As the artists became
more comfortable with the concept their paintings grew larger,
including a 9-by-5-foot mural for the Cape Girardeau Veteran's
Home painted by more than 1,000 people. They knew if they could
do that, they were up to the task of the bicentennial mural.
The mural is 30 feet long and 12 feet tall and split into 15 sections. It is made out of an aluminum composite. Each section features more than 1,700 triangles.
The state flag of Missouri is the background and 18 Missouri
state symbols along with the Missouri State Capitol and Gateway
Arch are in the foreground. An outline of Missouri is currently filled
white and will include pertinent information about the project as
well as sponsors.
Some of the state symbols depicted through the mural include
the flowering dogwood as the state tree, ice cream cone as the state
dessert, honeybee as the state insect and the fiddle as the state
musical instrument.
The project is intended to bring in as many people as possible,
so no donation is required, however it's still appreciated if possible.
They have taken sections of the mural across the state, already more
than doubling the current record number of painters.
Aaron Horrell instructs Judy Brant of Scott City on painting a 2-inch triangle on a
mural commemorating Missouri's bicentennial.
AUGUST 2020 | RURALMISSOURI.COOP

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Rural Missouri - August 2020

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