CHEYENNE — The horses don’t make a sound as they bound over the hillside overlooking Storey Boulevard, seeming to leap off the side of a water tower into the world. Their silence doesn’t stop them from turning heads all day long.
The mural, showing a herd of horses galloping over the hilltop, looks finished, but there is still a day or two of work left to do, according to the artist, Jordan Dean.
He’s been outlining the shapes of his creation late in the evenings on the top of a boom lift that’s up to 80 feet high.
“The paint team still has a little bit of work to fix in the sky and the birds and some things,” Dean told Cowboy State Daily on Monday. He was on his way to Alabama, where he is working on a different mural project.
“I hope when I come back it’s all done. If it doesn’t rain too much, they’ll have a good week, and they will finish it up,” he said.
Those larger-than-life horses cresting the hill are already turning heads, even though they’re not quite finished yet.
“So, freaking beautiful,” Martha Kendall Curl wrote on the latest progress update at Cheyenne Water Tower Mural’s Facebook page. “I love driving by it.”
“I was skeptical at first, but I love them! Well done!” wrote another Facebook user with the handle Morrison Familywy.
“This is awesome,” Betty Pier Russell wrote. “We will have to drive over to see it.”
Team Effort
Dean has done his last bit on the mural, touching up eyes and hair and some other little details. That was the first time he actually used the epoxy paint himself.
Most of that work is done by a day crew employed by CHP Paint Co, filling in the outlines that Dean has been making for them.
“I found out how difficult it is to work with the epoxy,” he said. “It’s thick and it’s sticky and, to get a clean edge, you really have to work at it. And so, I give a lot of credit to the paint guys who put in the extra effort to make sure that the details were so clean.”
Dean’s part of the project, up until then, had been to develop a design for the water tank, then translate that design onto the tank using cans of spray paint that approximate the color of the epoxy paint being used to paint the water tower.
Then a day crew comes along and fleshes out his idea with the real paint. That care is necessary because this paint costs $400 a gallon.
A Race Against Time
Dean does his work late at night while most of Cheyenne is fast asleep.
That makes it seem as if the mural is taking shape through some kind of overnight wizardry to those driving by it every day. It’s been fascinating to watch it come to life, one good weather day at a time.
Eric McDonald, owner of CHP Paint Co., told Cowboy State Daily that good weather is all that’s standing between his company and the final coats of paint. Of late, it’s been too wet.
Humidity and rain present special problems for this expensive paint, which is a race against time to use.
“There’s a part A and a part B,” he explained. “And when you mix them, it begins a curing process. You then have about two hours depending on humidity before it gets really too sticky and too thick to really work.”
After that, the paint becomes quite hard and shiny. It won’t spread at all.
McDonald has teams of three people working from a single gallon of paint to ensure every drop of the expensive stuff gets on the tank.
“We don’t mix more than a gallon at a time, because you certainly don’t want to have any waste,” he said. “You want to get through that gallon within that timeline, or else you can leave hundreds of dollars in your bucket.”
The paint spreads relatively well, particularly in the early stages, McDonald said — unless there is moisture in the air.
“It’s projected to be a wet week,” he said. “So, we’re kind of holding off right now, because if it rains an hour after you get some stuff done, it can have some really adverse effects.”
The team can’t take even the chance of rain on the paint, so they only paint on days that are projected to be nice, hot and dry.
“High humidity also has an effect on how this product behaves,” he said. “Humidity actually makes the product cure faster. Which is kind of counterintuitive. But so, you have less working time.”
Fine Details
While McDonald gives all credit for the artistry of the water tower mural horses to Dean, McDonald’s paint crew has a difficult job, Dean told Cowboy State Daily.
Dean is impressed with the work they have done to help his vision come to life.
“This is kind of a finicky product on a tank that’s on the tallest hill in a windy area,” McDonald said. “And the wind is always a challenge. The humidity is a challenge.
“I know we have to color inside the lines, but we’re not having to blend anything. So, we’re not actually a part of the artwork. We just have to make sure we communicate with Jordan on what colors go where, and then just get good coverage and do it safely.”
Not all of their brushes are large space-fillers. Some are small, as tiny as 1 inch.
“The hair is quite thin,” McDonald said of the detail in the horses. “And you can’t just slap it on. You are painting some pretty thin lines when you get to the mane of the horse and so forth.”
Last week, McDonald had extra crews on site making a run at finishing the mural. But rain on Friday foiled that effort. They will pick back up as soon as the forecast is better.
Dean said he’s had some folks asking if there are any plans to finish the back quarter of the mural, which right now is blank.
That is absolutely a possibility if enough money can be raised.
“I think people seeing the artwork go up on the first tank has encouraged a lot more donations,” McDonald said. “If there’s enough support to buy time and materials to paint the whole thing, I’m all for it. I would love to wrap the first artwork all the way around.”
Meanwhile, efforts are moving ahead on raising money for the second large tank on the hill, which is going to feature a mountain scene with bison, as well as a red checkerboard on top.
Dean is glad there’s one more tank to go.
“I’ve gotten used to being up high and seeing the city from up there,” Dean said. “I’m going to miss working on it, that’s for sure.”
Paint Rated For 30 Years
With humidity and wet weather in the forecast, Erickson and his team are not likely to do any work on the water tower mural at all this week.
That means the project might not be finished when Dean returns to Cheyenne sometime next week.
Dean said it’s possible he might go and put more finishing touches on the mural if it’s not finished when he returns. That’s always a temptation whenever he does a mural.
“I would love to continually touch it up,” he said. “I could probably work on it for a lifetime, but eventually, I kind of have to stop and carry on, move on to other things.”
For one thing, the expensive paint is available in finite quantities. The project required about 50 gallons of $400 paint, and once that $20,000 is gone, it’s gone.
The boom lifts, donated by Wyoming Rents, cost thousands to rent for a day. Those must go back soon so the company can rent them out to other customers.
“So, everything kind of has an end to it,” Dean said. “Eventually, as much as I would love to keep working on it, we have to put our brushes down and carry on.”
That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t take one more trip up in the boom to work on the mural, if it’s still possible when he returns. He’s just not expecting there will be any need.
“I’ve treated this as if I was done, so the I could walk away and be proud of it,” he said. “Even if there is — and this is telling of all murals, when I look at the first mural I did, and you know a lot of them, there are things that I wish I could tweak or fix or update to try and get it better.
“But at some point, I have to take a deep breath and say that’s how it is.”
That doesn’t preclude people in the community taking a deep breath for a completely different reason when they see the mural.
They’re not looking for things to fix. They’re talking about how perfectly Cheyenne this mural is, and how they hope the colors will stay vibrant forever.
Chances are good the colors will outlast the artist. The epoxy paint chosen for this job is rated for a minimum lifespan of 30 years.
Thirty years of beautiful horses galloping over the hill with wind tossing their manes and silent thunder in their hooves, as they perpetually bear down on Storey Boulevard.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
