By Vicky Wedig
SLN Staff
The City of Delavan is ready to paint the town – literally –in 2015.
The Walldogs – a group of artists who paint murals on buildings – plan to create 18 paintings in Delavan. For the past two decades, the Walldogs have created locally significant murals in cities and towns across the country and as far away as Australia and Canada to boost tourism.
The City of Delavan plans to host a Walldog event June 24 to 28, 2015. Over the four days, 18 lead artists will create locally themed murals on exterior walls of buildings or free-standing paintings that will hang on walls throughout the city, said City Administrator Denise Pieroni.
Another Wisconsin community – Plymouth, hosted a Walldog event last year, and Arcola, a city of 2,900 people in east-central Illinois hosted the Walldogs this summer. Chippewa Falls has had two Walldog events, and Algoma, near Green Bay, hosted the Walldogs in 2007.
City staff checked out the 21 murals painted in Plymouth in 2011 and the 15 paintings created in Arcola this year.
“They’re really neat murals,” said Pieroni.
The Delavan Common Council on Sept. 11 authorized a memorandum of understanding with the Walldogs organization establishing Delavan as the site of the 2015 Walldog event.
The city will form committees to guide the project. A committee will chose topics of local history or significance to be the subjects of the paintings, Pieroni said. The 18 lead artists will research the topics and create their designs, she said.
At the beginning of the event, street lights will be turned off, and the artists will project their designs on the walls or surfaces to be painted. The artists will trace the designs from the projection, and over the next three days, other artists will help them paint the murals.
“It literally is paint by number,” said Debbie DeGroot, tourism specialist with the Plymouth Chamber of Commerce.
In a typical Walldog event, about 150 artists help the lead artists paint a mural in four days that would normally take two to three weeks to complete, Pieroni said.
Brad and Kit Bandow, of Brushfire Signs in Williams Bay, will host the Delavan event.
“We will have 150 to 300 artists,” said Brad Bandow, a Walldog for 18 years.
Bandow participated in his first Walldog meet in Belvidere, Ill., in 1997 and also took part in the events in Plymouth and Chippewa Falls.
He said artists come to the events from around the world including Germany, Ireland, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand, Greece and Canada. Bandow said the artists catch up and talk about past meets.
“It’s like a family reunion on steroids,” he said. “It’s like nothing anybody has experienced before until you go to one.”
Bandow said after artists receive their subject matter, they typically do additional research and sometimes focus on something out of the ordinary that even local weren’t aware of. The artists create a mock-up of their painting with colors and present it to a local board.
“Since these people are professionals – this is what they do for a living, usually the artwork’s accepted as is,” he said. “They’re pretty spot-on.”
Bandow said the 18 project leaders will find a place for local artists who want to help to fill in.
DeGroot said local artists are key to completing the murals.
“They can’t be done without volunteers,” she said.
DeGroot said when Plymouth hosted its Walldog event, planners tried to schedule volunteers for certain time slots, but having a central location where volunteers could show up on the fly and ask where they were needed worked better.
Plymouth also arranged a central location to serve the artists lunch but found the painters got so into their work, they didn’t stop to eat, DeGroot said. She said bringing lunch to the sites where artists were painting worked better.
“The Walldogs themselves are a fantastic group to work with,” she said.
A City of Delavan committee also will begin identifying buildings to be painted with murals and work with property owners on agreements to maintain the murals, said Pieroni. She said the city wants the murals to be public art, so it needs the ability to maintain the paintings.
Another committee will work with the Delavan Downtown Business Association to raise funds as a not-for-profit organization, seek room tax revenue and generate sponsors to pay for the event, Pieroni said.
“This event will have a lasting effect and can be expanded on, and will be a real draw to bring people downtown,” Pieroni said.
Laura Welch, owner of the Brick Street Market and member of the Downtown Business Association, said the project will provide several benefits to the community.
“The murals would be something the whole community could be proud of,” Welch said.
DeGroot, of Plymouth, said residents there are protective of the 24 murals the city now boasts – 21 painted by the Walldogs and three by local artists.
“I thank the good Lord that since we had this done – not one has been defaced,” she said.
Welch said every community that has hosted a Walldog event has seen tourism go up.
“It is a great program that will create a needed destination sensation,” Welch said. “It is a way to bring people downtown and possibly bring in investors.”
The murals will cost $6,000 apiece, which will require an investment of nearly $100,000. Welch said the DBA will look for sponsors to cover that cost. Pieroni said room tax funding also will be applied for. The combination of the two should mean no tax money other than room taxes would be needed for the project. The only commitments the city must make are to provide event volunteer insurance coverage and the use of golf carts and staff assistance during the event.
“This is one of the better ideas I have heard,” Alderman Gary Stebnitz said. “I can see tons of people from all over the country coming out to watch this.”
“From the very beginning I thought this was a good idea,” said Mayor Mel Nieuwenhuis. “It will fit nicely with making the downtown more vibrant.”
Nieuwenhuis said the effort would show the city is serious about revitalizing the downtown and possibly entice investors to help with that effort.
Correspondent Michael S. Hoey contributed to this report.
