After collecting dozens of stories and photographs about Woodstock as she searched for her muse for her latest endeavor, mural artist Annalysa Kimball was stuck.
“I’ve had a wonderful year collecting memories and stories and people telling me what they think makes Woodstock unique and special,” said Kimball, commissioned by the city to illustrate a brick wall that measures 19 feet high and 92 feet long.
But as she sketched out ideas, things just weren’t coming together.
“In a frustrated moment, I took all these black-and-white and color images and threw them all over a table and stared at them and said, ‘All right, talk to me.’”
That’s when things started the click. She spotted similarities between decades-old black-and-white photos and modern-day color images: A boy and girl holding hands outside school. A man and his dog. People eating and chatting at long-ago drugstore soda fountain in one snapshot, and at a modern-day taqueria in another.
“I was thinking, this is so great! I was able to match and marry ways of life we still embrace today with those of 120 years ago.”
Kimball also is inspired by combinations of words: Life balance, health and happiness, growing families in the outdoors, celebrating the arts, “and of course eating and music and festivals, community and fellowship,” she said.
The mural, timed for Woodstock’s 120th anniversary, is to cover a side wall and wrap around the front and back corners of the Woodstock Pharmacy building at Main and Mill streets. “The mural will celebrate Woodstock’s unique historical identity while symbolizing the commonalities of the Atlanta region,” according to the project description.
To pay for the undertaking, the Atlanta Regional Public Art Program of the Atlanta Regional Commission provided an $8,000 grant; the Woodstock Downtown Development Authority, Woodstock Convention and Visitors Bureau and Preservation Woodstock matched it with another $8,000.
A stakeholder committee is working with Kimball, who lives in Waleska and previously executed wall paintings in Roswell and in Tallahassee, Fla., at a summer camp and for private clients.
The pharmacy wall is 100 years old and has been covered in several layers of paint. Experts have been ascertaining its condition over the past year. The wall faces south, and Sherwin-Williams Paint of Woodstock has recommended an exterior acrylic latex that would hold up well under strong sunlight.
For her research, Kimball has visited with local schoolchildren, had a booth at the city’s Friday Night Live series downtown, even engaged people walking down the street.
“We had them draw pictures and paint on wood slabs to express their love for the city,” she said. “And I’ve been talking to city historian Juanita Hughes, and she’s been showing me pictures and giving me tours of the city.”
A primer coat of paint has been applied to the wall, and Kimball expects to start work later this year. For updates, go to her Facebook page: http://bit.ly/2mwXctH
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