Tag Archives: Big Walls

Murals, New Painting Post, Wildlife

Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center Installation Complete

A two-year project finally gets across the finish line for Olympic National Park. Not the easiest thing to capture, but Nancy did a pretty good job of it photographing the final installation. A four-sided room with old-growth canopy, four other paintings on a tabletop with intricate details like swimming salmon, an otter, a fantasy image of Mount Olympus. There are hidden critters, pileated woodpeckers, spotted owls, snails, slugs, snakes, salamanders and more. There were times I truly wondered how this was all coming together, but it did – and I think it works pretty well.

Below, here’s a progress shot of some of the wall paintings (the original art) laid out in the old Superintendent’s house at Olympic NP.

And below: this part was too big to see all in one piece in the studio, so we tacked it up outside the barn occasionally to see how it was working. Nancy painted lots of the trees.

Installation with the guys from Virginia, Rob from Color-ad and Mike who did the 3-d stuff. I think we felt like family by the time with was finished.

Highly interactive tabletop was a pain to figure out, Often we all just made it up.

This is now installed and open for viewing at the Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center on the west side of Olympic National Park. The first new exhibits since construction of the building in 1968, I was first here in about 1978 for a backpack up the valley. That entry into the Hoh had a profound effect on me and it’s probably a big reason I have now spent my last two decades in Port Townsend – on the othe side of the peninsula. It’s a rare and spiritual place for both Nancy and I –  and now I feel we’re a part of it.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

Murals, New Painting Post

Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center progress

I’ve come up for air just long enough to post this – sorry for the big blank spot in my blog. Click the images and they should expand.

When I was growing up, my babysitters at the Illinois State Museum were staff artists and curators, professionals that were the best in the business. They came to work in pristine studios and took months and months to paint stuff just like this. Me, decades later? I do this in a low-ceiling studio and only have 6 weeks. Don’t get me wrong, I’m just happy that I get to do this – a giant four walls with six paintings in one of my favorite places on Earth. And it’s pretty much a completely fictitious scene. There are 3-d branches and models of birds, moles and others that all have to be connected somehow to my paintings. It’s been interesting!

Nancy joined me early on with this and is now pushing paint as fast as I am. How wonderful to have someone to talk to in the studio. And she sounds like she’s maybe going to make this a habit, at which I’m thrilled.

The facts: this is going in a room at the visitor center with a big opening, so there are four sides. I’m painting it in acrylic on Yupo poly paper at 70% size – the reason is I can’t get it bigger and it speeds things up. It’ll be scanned and printed so when the place burns down, another copy can be put up. The bottom two sections, the dirt and forest floor, are being painted at 85% because eyeballs will be closer. The bottom dirt section will be printed on aluminum to withstand the three million people with six million hands that come here each year. I’ll have more soon!

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

Murals

My Reelfoot Painting Is Almost Wrapped Up

These all enlarge with a click. This image represents 7 shots pieced together of my Reelfoot National Wildlife Refuge painting – the image I just sent out for review. I’m still tightening up the critters, shadows and getting goof-ups off the paper, but we’re close. It’s been a fun process creating something from nothing – well, not ‘nothing’, but a white sheet of tree-free Yupo is almost nothing. I greatly appreciate both the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Tennessee and Malone Design in Georgia for allowing me pretty much free reign on this project. It’s been a great experience, as always, to create an entire place almost life-size. It’s not an exact place, of course, but a mix of all the best things about this wildlife refuge.

Being just east of the Mississippi, there is a lot of moisture in the air, so I tried to make it feel that way – heavily laden with humidity. This is a fall scene, cypress going brown, maples and oaks in full color and lots of leaves on the ground as winter is coming on. Did I get it?
Just so you know, those gray squares are where exterior objects will land, a big interpretive panel for the large rectangle, two railings along the bottom. The final installation will measure 36 feet x 8 feet, or almost 300 square feet.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

Murals

Reelfoot National Wildlife Refuge – progress #6

Reelfoot-progress-6-fullweb

I’ve put fairly large images on the server, so please click these to see larger versions. Somehow cramming 36 feet into a couple of screen-inches just doesn’t cut it.

I pieced seven shots together to make these, and left the perspective in place so it’s just like what you’d see if you stood in front of it – just like I see this each day when I come to the studio, turn on the heat and lights and mix paint! I’m getting there, critters are now appearing, the foreground is settling in properly, birds flying in migrating flocks. Someone asked me what the empty space is on the left – it’s 24 sq feet of interpretive panel, something I just have to put up with sometimes. Someone also asked me if I enjoyed the challenge of figuring all this out. Yes, very much!

Reelfoot-progress-6-left Reelfoot-progress-6-right

Hope you like the way it’s coming along. I do (I think!).

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

Murals

Stage Three on My Reelfoot Mural for Tennessee

Reelfoot-progress-3

 

Stage Three out of how many I’m not sure – maybe 10 or 20!

A little farther along the trail this week with my Reelfoot National Wildlife Refuge painting. This thing is so long I’ve chopped it into two parts shown below – and all three enlarge in your browser for a better view. I’m still sort of working of all over the place, trying to figure out what their fall foliage would be like, yet trying not to overwhelm it with too much color.  It’s one thing to see it here, quite another to imagine it 38 feet long!

This week I learned about flooded corn stubble, how cypress browns in the fall, how the cypress ‘knees’ look when they grow – these are the cypress’ way to breath air when their trunks are underwater.Reelfoot-progress-3-left

 

It looks so different here on the screen than when compared with the giant thing taking shape from one end of my studio to the other. A couple of critters  have now appeared, but not in detail. Got to get those trees figured out first.Reelfoot-progress-3-right

More cowbell – we need more cowbell!

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

Murals, New Painting Post

Progress Report on Reelfoot National Wildlife Refuge mural

Reelfoot-progress-2
All images click to open in your browser, and I hope you do. I put fairly large files up so you can see details.

Here is some progress on my 18 foot painting for Reelfoot National Wildlife Refuge. The painting will be printed and installed at 38 feet x 8 feet. I’m getting there – still focused on setting the tone of the fall colors. The fall foliage-thing is something of a mystery, since it changes. In one way, it’s all correct at some point since leaves change a little at a time. But, too yellow, too brown, too red – who really knows?

entire-progress-2-left

Here’s the left side, cypress in the lake and swampy stuff in the foreground.

entire-progress-2-right

And there’s the right side going into seasonally-flooded hardwood forest, red oak, some cypress, some red maple – and then out into flooded corn fields that will be all stubble in fall with lots of ducks flying around.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

Murals

My Reelfoot NWR Mural Begins to Come Together

Progress Report:

I blogged about the sketch for tho weeks ago, and now paint is flying.  The photo above is part is the far-left side that will be 8 feet tall –  but it’s still lacking details. I took this to make sure the colors (that change almost daily in fall) are what everyone wants. It’s getting there. If you stood next to this in the final installation, your head would be about at the bottom of the cypress branches.

Progress – seemingly to be painfully slow at this stage. I just stick to it and tend to paint all over the place to get a feeling of how it’ll all mesh together. A little here, a little there, then fill in the holes to connect it all. Installed, this thing  will be two adjoining walls with a corner for a total of 38 feet, but painting it is still just one inch at a time. I greatly enjoy making my brain stress to the max trying to make it all work. LNE-2Reelfoot National Wildlife Refuge is in northwestern Tennessee, close to the Mississippi River and a place created when a huge earthquake formed a series of shallow lakes. Cypress and other bottomland forest species followed, making for a very picturesque place, especially in fall when the cypress needles turn yellow and red.

Thanks for reading this week.

Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

Murals

My Show at Gallery 9 – Saturday Throughout October

Polks-Eifert-right
18 foot mural about Florida, right side.

On Saturday, there’s a little show of mine opening in Port Townsend at Gallery 9. Thought I’d just pass it around. This is possibly the first gallery show I’ve ever put up where the main attraction isn’t for sale! One wall – one painting, and we were worried it would even fit.

Polks-Eifert-left
Left side of the painting. 18 feet x 4 feet.

ABOUT THE PAINTING (from the press release)

Port Townsend painter Larry Eifert has painted large-scale nature murals for parks, refuges and nature centers for many years. This 18-foot x 4-foot painting was commissioned for the Polks Nature Discovery Center in central Florida, and is painted on synthetic and tree-free paper. This is the original painting and was completed in 2013. It has never before been seen locally, and intertwines four separate ecosystems of Florida’s pine forests and cypress swamps. When completed, the painting was digitized, then enlarged 200% to 32 feet x 8 feet and printed on Dacron for its final installation.

If you’re local, we hope to see you there.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

Murals

A Mural For The Reelfoot National Wildlife Refuge

Click all images to enlarge them. At 38 feet, you’ll need to.

So – a new project is underway. This is for a new visitor center at the Reelfoot National Wildlife Refuge in northwestern Tennessee near the Mississippi River. I’ll post the progress in weeks to come, but wanted to at least pass around the sketches for comments – which always help me – even the bad ones. This one means a lot to me because I spent time here as a kid with Virginia on one of her research field trips ( but more about that later).

This installation will be 38 feet long and 8 feet tall, but I’m painting it half-size at about 19 feet by 4 feet – still a big painting. We’ll scan the painting, then it’ll be printed like wallpaper on Dacron. This means the art can be vandalized or the visitor center even burn down and they still have an installation. Since they’re self-ensured, the government is like that. Makes it easier for me to paint, but the brushes get fairly tiny.

Click to enlarge in your browser

Cypress swamps and waterlilies on the left side. This lake was created by a huge earthquake in the early 1800’s when the Mississippi River ran backwards and filled up this bottomland subsidence. Today it’s full of ducks and geese, turtles, fish and muskrats – just my idea of fun. And next, here’s the right side: all red oak forest in a seasonal flooding area. The fun part will be that they want a fall scene, so the cypress will be yellow, red oaks a flaming red/yellow. Add to that a good blue sky and it’s should be flashy – or at least that’s the plan.

Click to enlarge in your browser

Stay tuned, there’s more to come.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

Murals, Posts about other stuff

Washington State Public Art Roster gets ME

Necedah National Wildlife Refuge paintings, images that eventually became 138 lineal feet of public art. I used this as an example of what I do. Necedah NWR is in Wisconsin.

Click this image to enlarge in your browser.

Every three years lots of Northwest artists apply to get on the Washington State Public Art Roster, a fairly small pre-approved group of professional artists that will be tapped to create perminent installations in new public buildings throughout Washington State. Libraries, schools and all other institutions that use the 1% of the cost of building for art use this list, AND, a couple of days ago I received a letter saying I’d been accepted and am now on the list.

This is a rare event for me. My life has been filled with entering art shows or competitions that are always won by crazy or fairly amateurish non-objective or abstract work, and almost never by competent and skilled people who have spent years diligently homing their discipline. It’s just that I’m from a generation that came from another generation that believed the very nature of being professional meant knowing how to do it better than most others. In my pitch to the Washington State Art Commission, I stressed this, saying that making public art that viewers spend lots of time looking at is important, that it’s what public art is all about – at least for me.

How far it’s come for me. A painting I did for Carol Armstrong, over 50 years ago. I think it still looks okay.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.