Artists paint murals on buildings across Elko

ELKO — During the second week in October, 14 artists took brushes and spray cans to walls around Elko.

For their contributions to the Elko Art Festival, Reno muralist Lauren Hufft and Elko muralist Heather Wines split a group of shipping containers between the them in an Idaho Street parking lot — resulting in murals of a bee perched on a flower, a space suit filled with flowers, a human heart with flowers growing out of it and a cowboy boot.

"The Art Foundation gave us paint in all kinds of different colors. You can mix your own paint," Wines said.

Photos: Murals go up across Elko

ELKO — Artists gathered to paint murals on buildings around the city in the Elko Art Festival mural project, which added or updated over a dozen murals in the downtown area.

"Everybody's kind of doing different things. Some people brought paint that they wanted. They knew their colors. I know Lauren's got sketches of different designs. She's done other murals. I'm kind of a first-timer." Hufft had small paintings of her heart and boot designs, which she used as visual inspiration for the larger works.

"In my case, I freehand from my design onto the wall," Hufft said. "I use sidewalk chalk so that I can erase easily. But there are a lot of different ways. Heather came in last night, and she actually projected her design up and traced it that way. Sandy also freehanded her design. Because this is not a flat wall, I need to be able to adjust to the wall itself and using sidewalk chalk works for me."

Hufft said some muralists "come from a graffiti background, and when they come out, they're in and out. They're fast."

Reno muralist Joe C. Rock projected his graffiti-style design onto the walls inside the Wells Fargo concrete tunnel, throwing up the basic outlines in a short period of time. Then, over the next couple days, he refined the texture, adding rocky texture to images of silver and turquoise ores and light beams to headlamps. The result was a panorama of mining-related imagery.

On Fourth Street across from the Commercial Fun Center, Salt Lake City muralist Justin Johnson painted over the cowboy from a previous mural, scraping the paint off the faded, peeling background and replacing it with a vivid mountain scene. The process took Johnson a few days, with him on a lift first tracing the outlines of the mountains and horizon and then filling them in with orange, yellow, red and brown spray paint.

"You gotta scrape these old walls big time," Spring Creek muralist Gina Holmberg said. "I don't spend too much time on that because paint kind of covers everything."

Elko muralist Chris Vedis worked in gold mining for 16 years and is now a professional artist. He paid tribute to his former industry by painting a mining truck on the side of Centre Motel. Vedis took a multilayered approach for his mural, beginning with spray-painted scribbles. After creating the background, he added a mining truck with detailed shading and filled it in with hand-painted details.

Bill Louis of Salt Lake City added a sweeping Western ranch scene to the side of the Western Folklife Center, with horses, a barn and cows brought to life in sunset pastels. He did his work from a scissor lift, switching among the paint cans to detail horse legs. "Hospitality has been great here in Elko," he said.

Community members were involved with the murals as well. Simone Turner invited local children to add finger-painted dots to the flower petals on her alleyway mural.

To view the murals, visit the Centre Motel, the Manor Motor Lodge, the parking lot by B.J. Bull Bakery, the alley behind Blohm Jewelers, the Fourth Street vacant lot across from the Commercial Fun Center and the tunnel at Elko's Wells Fargo Bank.

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