Community Collaboration - Shelf Portrait

Rochester Public Library worked in conjunction with local artist Peter Lex and the Rochester Area Family YMCA to create a mural of books on the library's garage door. Each panel of the garage door is now a different shelf of books and related realia. The painting of the garage door took place over approximately four months, much longer than the anticipated four weeks. Due to the level of detail in the painting and weather, the project took much longer than anticipated to complete. People visiting the library stopped often to discuss the project and visit with Peter. He even asked for advice from library patrons on the color of book bindings. Peter Lex presented two programs at the library during the project. The first was an airbrush art presentation on 7/19/2013 where he talked about his art, showed examples and then applied airbrush tattoos to attendees. The second was the unveiling of the garage door on 9/19/2013 where attendees viewed the garage door, enjoyed refreshments and created their own bookshelf art to add to the mural inside the library. Four times throughout the month of July (7/2, 7/12, 7/16 & 7/22) children from the Rochester Area Family YMCA visited with Peter and spent time in the auditorium learning art techniques and creating bookshelf art to add to the indoor mural. The children worked on collage, stamp making, drawing with pencil and markers and painting. The bookshelves created by the kids were on display in the library auditorium hallway through September 2013. The children enjoyed chatting with Peter about the mural and his art and selected blue for the color of a book spine during one of their visits. Overwhelmingly, they said their favorite part of the mural was the popcorn. Due to the significance of the project, in October 2013, Peter Lex was nominated for the "Mayor's Award for Public Art" for the garage door mural.