Jun 16, 20213 min read

Pine Meadow Ranch Mural Project

Part 2 - Design and Prepping

(Part 1 - The Beginning can be found in the previous blog post)

After my meeting with artist Kathy Deggendorfer in July 2019, she and I drove to Kibak Tile where she introduced me to her friend and colleague, Susanne Redfield who creates beautiful custom tile at her factory in Sisters. Susanne had worked with Kathy to fabricate her tile mural for the new Cancer Center in Bend. We explained my broken tile mural project to her and she donated an enormous amount of excess tile she had at the factory for us to use. We drove back to Pine Meadow Ranch and put the tile in storage. We decided to delay having another meeting to discuss the project until January 2020, as I was busy working on an eighteen-foot mural for a private home in Mexico in collaboration with my friend and talented mosaic colleague, Lynn Adamo.

After our successful collaboration of the Nopólo Flow mosaic mural in Mexico, I asked Lynn if she wanted to collaborate on this cornerstone art piece with me. I introduced Lynn at our meeting with Kathy in January 2020 and worked out the details and timing of the project- we intended to invite several mosaic artists to come to Pine Meadow Ranch in the Fall of 2020 to help us fabricate the project. Well, COVID decided to change our original projection of the project as you will see!

After our meeting with Kathy, I went out to Pine Meadow Ranch and laid out the collected tile and Lynn drove out so we could see all of the colors we had to work with and the patterns on the donated tiles. We were intrigued with all of the graphic patterns on the tiles and thought it would be nice to make a design with a graphical structure. I went home and drew up a sketch of the wall for the mural and was able to divide it into 7 equal-sized panels to create the framework for the mural.

In March 2020, I sent my framework drawing to Lynn while she was traveling and also sent her my inspirational photos of the round barn architecture as an idea for the graphical design.

She responded with a sketch she had done in the car while traveling. I loved it!

In April 2020, I responded to her with several options for the design of the other panels and we finally decided on this iteration, so I colored in the drawing. Now, we had a rough design! Lynn and

I also chose a beige paint color for the mural wall. In addition, I started working on putting a budget together for the project and Lynn was working on drafting an invitation for artists to come work at Pine Meadow Ranch.

In June 2020, the Roundhouse Foundation board approved the budget for the project. I got busy prepping the site, painting the wall, having the frames welded, setting hangers for the frames, and prepping the substrates for each panel with waterproof membrane. Stay tuned for Part 3 – Fabrication of the mural panels.