There are many pieces of art the viewer has to study and think about. The large mural installed Monday afternoon in the new outpatient waiting area at Greene County Medical Center isn’t one of them.
Carla Offenburger, director of community relations at the medical center, worked with artist Zack Jones of Malvern on the 6 X 9-foot mural. “We wanted something that people would say, ‘Oh, my gosh, that’s where I live.’ We wanted something everyone would recognize part of,” Offenburger said.
And that’s what the mural is – it’s where Greene County residents live.
Jones was commissioned for the mural “because he’s really good at big pieces of work,” Offenburger explained. The Nishna Heritage Museum at Oakland features a 20 X 100-foot mural painted by Jones. Another Jones mural is at the Green Belt Bank & Trust in Iowa Falls.
He spent a day in Greene County last April doing research before he started painting. “I went to the Uptown Café and to Bunkers Dunkers and I asked people what I should go see,” he explained. One of his stops was at Pleasant Hill Church in Grant Township. There he came upon GreeneCountyNewsOnline publisher Tori Riley taking photos. He asked her the same question.
Pleasant Hill Church is included in the mural. So is the Mahanay Memorial Carillon Tower, the courthouse, the Darrell Lindsey memorial, the Doreen Wilber statue, the Milwaukee depot with a bicycle parked on the side, a Lincoln Highway emblem and a combine harvesting corn. Wind turbines are in the background, just as they’re in the background of many Greene County landscapes.
Jones said he did several sketches and sent them along to Offenburger. The concept of the mural is a joint creation; the painting was all Jones.
He estimated that he painted about 140 hours on the mural, and he admitted he had a hard time stopping. There were still some places where the oil paint wasn’t fully dry when the mural was installed. Jones had expected to be in Jefferson for the installation between 1 and 2 pm Monday. “I was still in Malvern painting on it at 12:30,” he confessed.
When Phase Two of the construction/renovation project is complete, there will be a glassed-in hallway across the front of the building. Offenburger said the mural will be visible from the west end of the hallway. She is selecting art by local artists “strategically placed.” “This is the beginning of what we hope is a good display of local art,” she said.
Jones is very active in revitalizing Malvern and he’s using art and music as part of the process, as a way to draw people. “Diversity is the key, combining different entities that play off each other,” he said.
“Art itself isn’t an economic driver, but the type of people it attracts are good for cafes and other businesses,” Jones said.
