In about three months, Belle Plaine will be the site of a dual invasion and this morning (Thursday) an advance team of one of those visiting groups was in town. On Sept. 18-20, the same weekend as the city’s annual Jumbo Well Days, a group of Civil War re-enactors will turn Franklin Park into an encampment and battlefield. Meanwhile, downtown, a team of artists from throughout the United States, who call themselves Walldogs” will be creating several huge murals to be installed on some of the buildings.

Nancy Bennett, originator of the Walldog concept, visited the city with her husband to scope out possible locations for the murals. Bill Daily, city administrator, conducted a tour of the downtown area. He said final decisions of what walls to be used is yet to be determined.
“Bill has picked out some great possible sites for the murals,” she said during an interview. She will take the information she gathered from this trip, as well as other research she does back home to Centerville to design murals that will fit well with the history and culture of Belle Plaine.

According to the group’s web site, “Walldogs are a group of sign and mural artists from all over the globe. The tradition of painting wall advertisements date back long before today. Evidence of this can be seen as ‘Ghost Signs’ throughout cities of all sizes. These mural painters of old were often called Walldogs. We adopted this nickname.

“Along with the title of Walldog, today’s mural artists have also adopted many other traditions that show in their work, from the colors they use to the design styles they practice, these murals capture that sense of nostalgia and historic significance.”

The Walldog movement began in the small Wayne County town of Allerton in 1993. Bennett, who had years of sign painting experience, was asked to paint a some advertising signs on towntown buildings. She assembled a team of dozens of sign artists to paint several large historic wall advertisements.

She said that as that team worked in Allerton, word spread of what they were doing and soon cars were streaming down the main street of the town of 500 to see the work in progress.

Since that beginning in rural Iowa, the movement has gone global, with artist groups creating murals in several Midwestern states, as well as Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and California, as well as a few projects in Australia and Canada, projects in Greece and Scotland and one in the planning stages in Germany.

More locally, residents who would like to see an example of their work need only travel to Vinton, where several murals were created a few years ago.

While the Walldogs have often painted directly on the surface of the building, Bennett says the Belle Plaine project will be a bit different. Her team of approximately 20 artists from Nevada, Canada and several Midwest states, will paint the murals on panels of an aluminum composite, painted on site, then the panels will be attached to the walls using a lightweight aluminum frame system. She is still uncertain of the type of paint the team will use. She said that while earlier works were created with oil-based paint, she thinks this project will be either acrylic or water-based paint.

Before the work begins in September, Bennett will electronically create designs for each mural and create blueprints with the appropriate color instructions for each segment of the mural. She also said the designs she creates will not be abstract creations, but true to the history of the area.

Local residents will host the artists during their weekend stay. Besides the artists’ fee for their work, local commitments will include materials, ladders and scaffolding as needed. The city has applied for several grants to help pay for the project, one aspect of the planned streetscape project in the downtown district.

Since this work will be done in September and the weather in Iowa is always unpredictable, Bennett was asked what the group would do if there is poor weather that weekend. She said that in other projects, the group has “painted like crazy” in advance of storms. She also said that because of the nature of this project, the panels could be possibly be moved into a vacant building where the artists could continue to work.

But Bennett is keeping positive thoughts on the weather in September so that local residents an easily follow the progress of the artists during the busy weekend in the city.

More information on the Walldogs can be found at the group’s web site, www.thewalldogs.com