On October 18, 2012 Hickory Rotary Club welcomed internationally known artist Brenda Mauney Councill, who spoke to the club about her career as a muralist. She currently specializes in large-scale murals, particularly domed ceilings, tackling projects that often put her high in the world of art. Her last project involved scaffolding six stories high. This project is now the Largest Painted Dome in the Southeast, (Kannapolis, NC).
Her most recent exhibition project is located at the Hickory Museum of Art, where she has designed and is painting a large-scale mural, which is hanging in the Museum’s Coe Gallery. The exhibition, A Mural in the Making: From Concept to Completion with Brenda Councill, introduces viewers to the fundamentals of creating murals, including drawing and composition, perspective and vantage points, mixing of paint and selection of mural paint, as well as translation of images from miniature to monumental. On most Fridays and Saturdays, Museum visitors of this “live” event will have the opportunity to witness the progression of Ms. Councill’s unique and intimate idea transform into a larger-than-life series of images on a canvas approximately fourteen feet wide by twenty-two feet tall. The artist is accessing the two-story tall canvas by scaffolding erected especially for this exhibit.
The mural is being created for Shurtape Technologies, LLC. Stephen Shuford, CEO of Shurtape, relates, “As a proud supporter of Brenda Councill, we are pleased that she will be using our FrogTape® and Shurtape® Blue Painter’s tape to assist in the creation of her upcoming mural. We are honored that, after its showcase at the Hickory Museum of Art, the mural’s permanent home will be in our new corporate office.” Councill has been using Shurtape products during the more than 15 years she has been painting large-scale murals.
Ms. Councill’s permanent public murals can be seen in the Belk Library and in the Reich College of Education building on the campus of Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, the Belk Atrium of Presbyterian College in Clinton, SC, the Grandfather Home and School for Children in Banner Elk, NC, the North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis (the largest painted dome in the Southeast), Rumple Memorial Presbyterian Church, Blowing Rock, NC, Caldwell and Cabarrus County Public Health Buildings, the Women’s Center at St. Mary’s Hospital in Athens, GA, and in Boca Raton, FL, on the exterior wall of the Penn-Florida building.
Brenda Councill’s
thirty-five year, award-winning career has been profiled and praised by such notables as Martha Stewart, the late Greta Garbo, Michael Douglas, Samuel L. Jackson, and Gene Shalit, as well as The Oprah Winfrey Show, PBS/UNC-TV, FOX, CBS, and NBC.
Her work is in the following corporate and private collections: DuPont, AT&T, CSX Transportation, Credit Suisse, British Airways, The Canadian Imperial Bank, SunTrust, Gate Petroleum, Roberta Von Schlossberg, Sidney Kimmel, David H. Murdock, E. Llwyd Ecclestone, Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos, Senator Bob Dole, and Carol and Irwin Belk.
Hickory Museum of Art will host a Closing Reception on Friday, November 16, 2012 from 6:00-8:00 PM. The event is free and open to the public. Attendees will have the opportunity to meet the artist and see the mural near completion. A Mural in the Making runs through November 25, 2012. Exhibition support has been provided by Shurtape Tec
hnologies, LLC, Charlotte Paint Co., Sunbelt Rentals, Crowne Plaza of Hickory, and Vicki Cogins. This project is supported by the United Arts Council of Catawba County through the North Carolina Arts Council, with funding from the State of North Carolina and the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.
For more information contact Lisë Swensson, Executive Director of the Hickory Museum of Art, at 828-327-8576 or via e-mail lswensson@hickorymuseumofart.org. Visit Brenda’s website www.councill.net.
