Friendship Dance mural will highlight the event
The much anticipated Vision Eufaula Wine & Art Festival is all set for Saturday, Sept. 9, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 150 N. Front St., the vacant lot south of Nelson Feed & Seed.
There will be art booths, wine from area wineries, food trucks, live music and more.
A highlight of the day will be A Friendship Dance, the mural that Muscogee (Creek) artist Starr Hardridge has spent the past couple of weeks creating on the north wall of E’s Hideaway Restaurant.
Spectators have watched as the colorful work in progress evolved, with most of the work taking place in the cool hours of the night between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.
He began by sketching the mural on Sunday, Aug. 27.
As of Monday, Hardridge was largely finished with the project, which measures 58 feet by 8 feet.
“I just have to fine tune some things,” he said.
Hardridge said he is using a durable, high quality paint which is designed for extreme weather and extreme changes in temperature.
The Muscogee (Creek) Nation contracted with the 46-year-old artist to create the mural, painted on the side of the building owned by Karen Weldin, head of Vision Eufaula.
Hardridge’s painting will join several other murals around town created on buildings for last year’s Mural and Art Festival.
In addition to Hardridge, artist Jack Fowler, former editor of the Indian Journal, is enhancing this year’s art event.
Fowler has sketched six figures from Eufaula’s past on canvases measuring 5-feet by 5 feet.
Each sketch is divided into several sections, creating a paint-by-thenumber canvas.
For $1,000, individuals, or businesses, may become artists for a day and paint the pictures, following the numbers assigned by Fowler.
The six historic figures from Eufaula include football legends Lucious, Dewey and Lee Roy Selmon; jazz saxophonist Charles Brackeen; singer, performer, Native American activist Tsianina Redfeather Blackstone; and businesswoman Sarann Knight Preddy, first woman of color to have a gaming license in the state of Nevada.
Paint by-the-numbers is a community project, not a project for one painter.
“This will be a lot of fun,” Weldin said. “And it will get people in the community and businesses involved.”
