project<\/a> began during 2013 when the KAC brought in Connie Greeny, a mosaic tile artist from Wisconsin, to do the design and technical work for the mural.<\/p>\nThe mural depicts the four seasons inspired by the swirling skies of Van Gogh\u2019s \u201cA Starry Night,\u201d says Sue Ross, Kirksville Arts Association Board Member. Within the mural, specialty tiles created by Greeny depict Kirksville landmarks such as Red Barn Park, Kirk Memorial and the petroglyphs at Thousand Hills State Park.<\/p>\n
What ties the mosaic back to the area is the community\u2019s involvement with making the rest of the tiles. Volunteers from around Kirksville participated in every step of the process, from painting the pieces to putting together the panels and mortaring and grouting the finished product.<\/p>\n
Art teacher Samantha Shelly helped organize the tile making at Kirksville High School.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis concept of watching it all go together and seeing it with the colors and combinations and where it\u2019s supposed to go, that was pretty magical,\u201d Shelly says.<\/p>\n
More than 3,000 tiles make up the mosaic, and local students and community members made around 2,500 tiles. The KAC reached out to the Rotary Club, Kiwanis Club and Twin Pines Nursing Home among other local organizations to encourage them to be a part of the project.<\/p>\n
The permanency of the tiles created by community members is what makes the mural a legacy, says Linda Treasure, Kirksville Arts Association Board member.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor years this building was Baldwin BizMart, an office supply store,\u201d Treasure says. \u201cTwo of the brothers who used to work at Baldwin BizMart were at the Rotary Club when we came to visit. They were in different parts of the room, but they each made a tile that had Baldwin BizMart on it. One of those brothers just recently passed away, but his tile is still out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The project was made possible through the Travis Freeman foundation. Travis Freeman was an active member in the Kirksville Arts Association before passing away, and was keenly aware of the importance of public art, Ross says. Freeman was instrumental in the second exterior project at the KAC.<\/p>\n
\u201cTravis Freeman was a friend of mine,\u201d Ross says. \u201cHe scooted over to me at church one day to the other end of the pew and said, \u2018We\u2019ve got to get some public art in Kirksville.\u2019 Next Monday morning, I called him and we cooked up that project because we had those empty spaces up there. He wanted school children to be involved.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second mural project extended the opportunity to schools in the area to design one of 12 panels to be featured on the south side of the building. After judging the submissions, the winning panels for the project and were mounted on the side of the building.<\/p>\n
In addition to paying homage to public art, the KAC regularly hosts events and galleries for the community. The current exhibit, open until Jan. 3, is Bernard Perlin\u2019s \u201cAn Artist Goes to War.\u201d<\/a> The exhibit features more than 50 works, including propaganda posters, paintings, sketches and drawings from Perlin\u2019s time as a World War II artist-correspondent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[easingsliderpro id=”1″] The exterior of the Kirksville Arts Center is decorated with two art pieces inspired by the surrounding community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[39],"class_list":["post-136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adair-county","tag-adair-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmn.truman.edu\/detoursadaircounty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmn.truman.edu\/detoursadaircounty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmn.truman.edu\/detoursadaircounty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmn.truman.edu\/detoursadaircounty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmn.truman.edu\/detoursadaircounty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tmn.truman.edu\/detoursadaircounty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146,"href":"https:\/\/tmn.truman.edu\/detoursadaircounty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions\/146"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmn.truman.edu\/detoursadaircounty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmn.truman.edu\/detoursadaircounty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmn.truman.edu\/detoursadaircounty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmn.truman.edu\/detoursadaircounty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}