by Heather Moe

It’s been tough to figure out the frames.

But our committee is concerned that having a group of artists working in the alley could create problems. Painting on an uneven surface is hard, painting on bricks is hard since they soak up a lot of paint, painting in the alley could be dangerous from cars going by, and painters would certainly be in the way of delivery trucks going by. Plus, artists would need to work on ladders or scaffolding to reach the top of the murals.

We decided to address these concerns by having the artist paint the mural on a “canvas” that we would “hang” in the alley.

Of course, the canvas had to be durable enough for outside, and the hanging mechanism would have to keep the canvas secured to the wall. We would also want to be able to remove and replace our canvases on occasion.

So our current plan is to use 2 pieces of 4 x 8 plywood placed side-by-side to create an 8 x 8 canvas. Then we will build frames out of treated (and conveniently brick colored) 2 x 4 wood studs bolted to the wall, in order to secure the canvases to the wall. We will cut a notch in the inside edge of the frame to hold the plywood in place on the frame.

The next step is to build and evaluate a prototype.