Community Mural Depicts Mills County's Natural Beauty, Landmark Buildings

A community mural that could soon be greeting visitors to Malvern was unveiled Thursday at the Malvern Public Library.

Artist Anna Stoysich, who coordinated the project, said the “What does Mills County mean to you?” themed mural took six weeks to complete and features contributions from about 25 individuals from the Mills County community.

“What’s really neat about this project is that it was children and adults working together side by side – third generational. I love that,” said Stoysich.

The mural depicts Mills County through the eyes of the individual artists.

“They’re all native animals, plants, birds, insects,” Stoysich noted. “We talked about past, present and future of Mills County so we have some kind of old-timey things, then we see people using their imagination for the future.”
In addition to Mills County’s natural beauty, the mural also features some prominent buildings and landmarks, like the Waubonsie Church, Malvern Community Building, Hastings Grain Elevator, Folsom General Store and the Malvern Public Library with a futurist twist - a vertical addition to possibly house more books.

The mural involved a week of prep work by Stoysich at the beginning of the project and a week of her putting on the finishing touches at the end.

“It has exterior primer on it. It’s on an aluminum panel. Then we used an exterior paint,” said Stoysich. “Before we even held the first workshop, I painted in the hills, the yellow kind of field area, the light green and the sky.

“Our first meeting, which covered plants, we were working on mural cloth, which is a totally different  material. Some artists use that, they paint their entire painting on the cloth and then paste it on a billboard. It allows artists with hard to reach areas to work in their studio and just paste it later. We just cut and pasted the plants onto the panel.”

After the individual pieces of the collage were created, Stoysich added the finishing touches.

“I kind of looked at everything, saw what we had and I kind of arranged and composed it, did a lot of moving around,” she said.

Stoysich also added some trees, darker green for grass and a little railroad track to complete the mural.

The mural project was a partnership between Stoysich, the Malvern and Mills County communities and Folsom Lake Solar.

“Folsom Lake Solar, they had funding so that helped get the ball rolling. They offered to do a community mural project.” Stoysich noted.

Stoysich met with Alyssa Pacheco, a community engagement specialist for Folsom Lake Solar, to decide what the project would be.

“We weren’t really sure of the format,” said Stoysich. “But after talking and showing her pictures of artist friends of mine and what they do, I suggested this collage style so that’s what we did.”

The mural is coated with an acrylic Poliver sealant to protect it from the elements. Stoysich said the plan is to have the mural in place this fall.The proposed site for the mural is on the side of a building that sits adjacent to the Wabash Trace Naturre Trail.