I’ve been keeping tabs on Brian Fitzgerald’s progress on the 3D pop art mural he is creating with the students at Fort Lauderdale High School. It looks like the mural will be up and formally unveiled on May 25th. The kids are sprinting to the finish line and i’m excited to go down and see the finished product.
Here is a series of updates directly from Brian:
4/21/2011 Hello Charles,
This week the mural sections are 98% done, without the little glue-on cutouts we discussed. Next week we will cut, sand, paint and glue on those cut-outs, finish painting the large cut-out sections, and hopefully apply the modge-podge. I ordered all the hardware to connect the upper layers to the mural segments. My goal is for us to attach some of the cutouts by the end of next week (after everything has been modge-podged) and have the whole mural assembled and ready to go to Maaco by May 10th.
4/30/2011 – This week we worked on finalizing the mural sections which are just about finished being painted. The students spent the majority of the week painting the glue-on cut-outs and also the 3D cutouts and yesterday we were able to begin modge-podging the 3D cut-outs. We also started gluing some of the cutouts directly onto the board. Next week the students will finish painting and modge-podging all the 3D cut-outs, and glue on the cut-outs to the mural sections. I plan to drill 12 mounting holes for each section. Once the glue on cut-outs are in place we will modge-podge everything. The mounting hardware should arrive next week in which we will be able to mount the 3D cut-outs. Next week by Friday the mural should be constructed completely and be ready to go to Maaco for the final coating.
5/5/2011 – I have received our spacers and I have purchased all the mounting hardware to start attaching the mural cut-outs to the panels. The spacers – which is a story I will tell you about later – are 1 inch tall – all 400 of them. What I plan to do – if you like this idea – is to have some of the cut-outs stand off the mural section the full 2 inches like we originally planned and have some of them stand off the mural only 1 inch, allowing for different levels of height with the 3D components. If you like this idea, than I will go ahead with that plan. If you don’t like that idea – just let me know. Our facilities guy at our school suggested that the Maaco people put a strip or two of fiber glass across the top edge of the mural to double protect from the rain – he says the moisture from rain would be the worst there and threaten the plywood separating. What do you think?
5/9/2011 – Here are some pics of the finished products – ready to go to Maaco. By tomorrow the last two panels will be complete and I will be able to arrange shipping them over there.
Brian, you have done an incredible job with these kids. I cannot wait to see the completed mural in a few weeks. CONGRATULATIONS. It’s turning out to be AMAZING!
