KLCC | Aug 30, 2017 | By Terry Way & Sandy Brown Jensen
Have you seen the dynamic murals popping up all over Eugene? They are part of the 20x21EUG Mural Project, an initiative to create 20 or more world-class outdoor murals in Eugene between now and the 2021 IAAF World Championships. Muralists are coming from all over the world. When Eugenean Ila Rose first heard of the project, she immediately reacted, “When I did hear of the project, I thought instantly you know , “Where’s the local involvement? As a local artist, I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if I could have that same opportunity?'”
Most of us know Ila Rose’s Oregon Country Fair posters from the past three years, but did you know she painted the mural on the side of the Chao Pra Ya building? The mural at Third and Lincoln is only her second big mural, though, and it presented some challenges, “It takes a lot of stress [laughs] No, really for me it requires a lot of planning. Especially for me because I haven’t done a lot of murals. It felt really important to me to have a good grasp on my design, so I could estimate … the amount of paint to cover that big of a wall. And in order to know how much paint I needed, I needed to know what colors I’d need, so I needed to have a better idea of my design….I drew it out, and I painted it out…”
