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caption, page 1:
Christyan Garcia, 9, of Woodstock zips over to one side of a Boxcar scene he chalking in while his brother Gio Garcia, 5, watches. More photos on page 6. Expanded photo array Wed. night on our Facebook page: Putnam Town Crier & Northeast Ledger. Artists and helpers are trying for a November ribbon cutting on the 290-foot mural next to the Boxcar Museum on South Main Street. Linda Lemmon photo.
captions, page 6:
from left:
Benjamin Summa, 6, of Putnam
Kathy Borner, left, and Elaine Turner
290 feet of art
Nolan Lehto, 9, of Killingly
By Linda Lemmon
Town Crier Editor
PUTNAM — Yes, miracles are exciting — and so is hard work and community spirit.
The Boxcar Mural, running 290 feet along the sidewalk below the Gertrude Chandler Warner Boxcar Children Museum, is well underway with help from everyone from professional artists to school children.
Elaine Turner, community liaison of the Art Guild Northeast, said they hope to have the ribbon cutting for the community artwork in November.
It started, she said, when she heard Carly DeLuca, the town’s Community and Economic Development director, remark that it would be really nice to have a mural about Warner and the Boxcar children’s book series, along the wall.
Mayor Barney Seney agreed it was a great idea and jumped in enthusiastically. He said “Here’s what we’re going to do! Get your people together.” Turner said “I love that he said this.”
“Her ‘people’,” she said, “is the entire community.”
Turner asked for help and first on the art train was The Complex Performing and Creative Arts Center’s Nichola Johnson and it blossomed from there. “The mayor asked how he could help and I said I was interested in students and he called the superintendent,” Turner said. Word of mouth helped more and more schools come aboard: Thompson, Putnam, Killingly, Brooklyn and more, plus Pomfret Community School, Woodstock Academy and Marianapolis.
Turner said there are a total of about 50 “point people” and when you count all the classrooms coming in, the number of participants comes to “maybe 500.”
Seney used the leftover money from the sidewalk project along South Main Street to have the retaining wall fixed and a skim coat of concrete applied.
The money for the project itself comes from fund-raising, Turner said. They called for sponsors for an art panel for $300 and have 19 sponsors plus a couple people who donated funds. No tax dollars are being used, she said.
The community created the “smooshing” layer first — blue and green as outdoor backgrounds for what follows. Turner said 23 book covers will be created first on “Polytab,” a material that is painted on separately and then attached to the mural wall. It’s made for the outdoors. Some of the artwork outside Bear Hands is done in Polytab. Sherwin Williams outdoor latex, Latitude, is the paint used for the entire project, Turner said.
Twenty-three Boxcar series book covers will be attached along the wall, interspersed with scenes recounted “benchmark” moments in the Boxcar children’s lives.
They’ve already “blocked in” a few scenes to get people excited, she said.
She said the mayor asked about drawing it all out, a plan. She told him let’s not. “Drawing it out doesn’t leave room for miracles.”
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