Local residents will get the chance to pick up a paint brush and make their mark on a new mural this Saturday.

Art on the Prairie commissioned artists Jimmy Navarro and Katie Jensen to create a mural in Perry’s downtown. The mural will stretch 75 feet wide and will be installed above Raccoon Valley Bank. Lynsi Pasutti, with Art on the Prairie, said the mural will be more of an installation as 17 panels will be painted before being placed on the wall above the bank.

Local residents are invited to help paint some of those panels during a Community Mural Painting event from 1-4 p.m. Saturday in the Town/Craft Gallery. 

“(We wanted) to get more people involved and see the process, see what it looks like up close and be able to make their mark on it as well,” Pasutti said.

The mural, she added, will depict a scene from Dallas County featuring a prairie landscape, rolling hills and the Raccoon River Valley. Navarro said the mural will also have Art on the Prairie brushes hidden within the larger scene.

“It’s a rolling mural. Sometimes when you see a mural, you see it in seconds. This is a mural that takes time to see, there’s hidden things in there,” Navarro said. “The Raccoon River makes an entrance and then there’s all the indigenous flowers and the oak savannas.” 

The mural will be painted in a style reminiscent of stained glass.

“It’s just a really interesting style because it’s all parts and pieces that make one larger view,” Pasutti said. “We thought that was an interesting connection with the We the Many concept of many voices all together.”

Art on the Prairie was selected as one of three We the Many pilot programs in 2020. Arts Midwest and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation helped Art on the Prairie explore what it means to be a Midwestener through storytelling. Plans shifted for the project with COVID and while a final storytelling performance was held in 2021, Pasutti said there was still funding available.

“With Art on the Prairie being more focused on visual arts, we were excited about the opportunity to expand the work we had done with storytelling through We the Many and decided a nice capstone would be a mural,” she added.

Mary Rose Nichols said they talked with Raccoon Valley Bank’s Terry Nielsen about placing a mural on the wall above the bank. The bank ended up replacing the siding earlier this summer and Des Moines artists Navarro and Jensen, with help from Chandler Condon, started prepping and painting the panels.

Nichols said Art on the Prairie’s partnership with Raccoon Valley Bank was a big part in helping make the mural project happen, along with the We the Many partners.

“It’s neat to see how one project flows into another project,” Pasutti said. “There’s so many collaborations and community partnerships that make any one project possible but then how it snowballs into more excitement and more participation.”

A perfect example of that, Nichols added, is the addition of a partnership with Perry Schools to have students assist with the mural. 

“To have the students painting is just adding the layer that we really wanted to have it be community based,” she said.

Perry High School students picked up paint brushes last week and it didn’t take them long to understand the technique.

“This is 40 minutes and this is looking exactly how I’m painting,” Navarro said. “I can tell they’re going off of their feelings. When one of the students first started, she was putting two of the same colors next to each other. I’m like you have to learn how the tree moves.”

Pasutti said that interaction between the artist and local students adds another element to the mural.

“I think that’s a cool experience for an art student to meet a professional artist and be a part of the process,” Pasutti said. “Then they’ll be able to pass by and see that they were a part of that for years and years.”

Nichols and Pasutti are looking forward to continuing the community participation through Saturday’s mural painting event. All ages and experience levels are welcome.

“It’s an invitation to any and all to stop by and see the progress, maybe pick up a paint brush,” Pasutti said. “It will be a chance to meet the artists, learn about the process and be a part of it.”