Greater Des Moines mural: Behind-the-scenes

The mural collaboration with the Community Foundation of Greater Des Moines has been a long time coming - hours of preparation, strategy and artist review took place to arrive where we’re at this month! It’s been such a privilege to work with the Community Foundation. They had a vision for something large-scale and grand for their 50th anniversary. And I’d say they did just that. Taking place on the west side of the Renaissance Des Moines Savery Hotel, it’s one of Des Moines’ largest murals yet!

I want to share a little bit about the behind-the-scenes on how a mural happens. Whether we approach a business that has an awesome blank wall or a business comes to us – the process usually follows the same template. We work with the business to talk about what they want to highlight, how the mural should feel, and what they hope to accomplish. We then send out a Request for Proposal (RFP) to our list of artists, go through the artist selection with our client and finally settle upon the perfect design. (Side note, if you're an artist that would like to be added to our RFP contact list, let us know!) For the Community Foundation, the selected artist was Des Moines resident, Ben Schuh.

Our next step is handling all of the logistics. This is definitely our forte and is an art in and of itself. We believe our job is to make sure the artist has no obstacles to create the best mural possible for our clients. We work hard to make sure our client thinks it looks effortless (even though it is anything but). Once the artist begins, we’re the support team. Different artists work different ways, of course. A common hangup is pairing the right kind of lift equipment with the location. Boom lifts, electric scissor lifts, scaffolding - this is all language we’ve learned as it depends on the wall height, ground material, gate clearing, etc.

The most common technique our artists use to transfer the design from paper to an exterior wall is with a projector. Artists have to wait for the sun to go down so that the projector light can be seen to trace! This is the technique Ben used for the current mural (along with his well-known Cheers Des Moines mural at Exile Brewing).

There’s a lot of work to make a great mural. Many things have to go right – the right client, the right artist, the equipment, the weather (rain or low temperatures can be detrimental to the paint setting so we’re checking weather.com pretty constantly.) And, this factor has been one of the biggest hiccups this month! The forecast has predicted rain about five days a week. But, Ben has done a great job of hustling in between storm clouds.

We’re so excited to see the mural complete. It’s a special thing for each letter to showcase an iconic Des Moines scene! The whole project has been rewarding - the connections made, the positive feedback from the public and the opportunity to expand the city’s list of murals. We recently shared our 8 Best Instagram worthy spots in Des Moines and we anticipate this list to only grow - now with this addition finishing in June!

If your business or venue is interested in partnering with us on creating a mural, let us know! You can learn more about public art options here or see our public art portfolio. As a crusader against blank walls, I love any and every opportunity to paint the city.