Colourful mural a signpost
A social service group has commissioned a mural to help it stand out in an otherwise monotonous industry area.
‘‘We wanted to stand out ... be approachable,’’ said Kim Penny, general manager of the Palmerston North Methodist Social Services. This was especially important because when people required its services, they ‘‘didn’t come feeling their best’’.
The service is a food bank that also offers counselling, education services and social work free of charge.
Penny said her team was in the ‘‘industrial’’ side of Main St, flanked by auto supplies and painters. The repetitive industrial architecture along the state highway made it ‘‘easy to drive past us’’.
Penny commissioned Manawatu¯ artist Michael Angelo, renowned for his use of colour, carvings and personality, to do the job.
It was Angelo’s first foray into the outdoor mural world. Far from being intimidated by a different type of canvas, his overconfidence led him to believe he would only need 21⁄2 months of the five it took him to complete the project.
He created the trees and animals separately before adding them to the building, carving them freehand with a jigsaw. The design wasn’t based on anything but his imagination, and what he thought would make people happy.
‘‘The longer you look at it, you find something new,’’ Penny said.
Angelo had created art for more than 20 years, and previously told Stuff he took up the craft following a life-changing trip to a marae in Rotorua.
A man hosting a wood-carving exhibition offered Angelo a go at the trade and later told him the techniques he picked up in the first hour would take an average student many months.