A couple of articles featured Circleville, Ohio earlier this year, Square the Circle and Circleville Survived. I’d honed in on this otherwise nondescript town because anything with a circle was fair game for Twelve Mile Circle. And I actually discovered a few fascinating tidbits, confirming once again that geo-oddities existed everywhere. One such item included a remarkable trompe l’oeil mural of a nostalgic old-timey scene of what the area may have looked like a century ago. The town commissioned it to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Circleville’s Pumpkin Show.
The artist was Eric Henn of Eric Henn Murals, and a Circleville native. Originally I wanted to post an article about other Eric Henn artworks right away. That wouldn’t have been unprecedented, either. I’ve featured other artists of outdoor wonders such as The Visual Genius of Dave Oswald. Unfortunately, at the time, I couldn’t find enough photographs with the proper Creative Commons licensing to display them here. An article about artwork without the images would be lame. So I set the idea aside, revisited it from time-to-time, and just recently found enough examples to continue.
The Eric Henn portfolio focused on outdoor structures including buildings, petroleum storage tanks and water towers. I managed to find a representative sample and some additional background information for a few that piqued my interests.
Buildings
About 90 miles west of Circleville, in Franklin, Ohio, stood a great concentration of Eric Henn murals. Local residents were justifiably proud of them too, as noted by the local Convention & Visitors Bureau:
“City of Murals Tour. Take a self-guided walking tour around the city of Franklin, Ohio for a day and you’ll understand why it’s called the ‘City of Murals.’ Ten beautiful murals depicting different scenes throughout the history of the city can be found all around town. The murals, most found on the exterior of buildings, were painted by nationally known local muralist Eric Henn, and include the only Ohio Bicentennial mural in the state that is not on a barn.”
Apparently Mr. Henn relocated from Circleville to Franklin at some point in his life and went about creating murals in his new home town. The image I selected on the Huntington Bank Building (map and Street View) won a National Municipal Mural Award although I couldn’t find further information about it. However, nontraditional outdoor artwork like this had an issue. Harsh weather will take a toll eventually and some of the Franklin murals were a little worse for wear although restoration efforts were underway.
Petroleum Tanks
It would probably be obvious to most 12MC readers that a globe mural would fascinate me the most. This portrait of earth applied to an old natural gas holding station in Savannah, Georgia. It replaced an earlier and less realistic version created by another artist that had fallen into disrepair (map).
“Once dubbed the largest world in the world — 60 feet in diameter — the globe was operable until the 1970s. By then, a well-known part of Savannah’s geography, the globe was maintained by the gas company until the early 90s. When A to Z Coating bought the rusting structure, it asked businesses to help it get the planet back in shape. More than a year later, the time has finally come…”
They commissioned Eric Henn Murals to paint the globe in its new form in 1999. A minor controversy ensued when the image included a hurricane just off of the coast of Savannah. I would have thought the controversy might have been related to the application of a potentially catastrophic storm about to slam into the city. No, apparently that wasn’t a problem. Rather the hurricane painting rotated in the wrong direction, as if it were moving out to sea. A quick touch-up resolved the situation and the storm charted a course towards Savannah. The storm, incidentally, appears quite clearly on Street View.
Water Towers
I hate driving on Interstate 81 in Virginia — HATE it — with frequent hills that bunch-up intense truck traffic. It’s probably second only to Interstate 95 on my list of evil roads to avoid unless absolutely necessary. However, I know I’m just about done with the horrible experience when I pass the apple basket water tower in Mount Jackson (map and Street View). The design made perfect sense. Apples have long been a fixture of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, with an annual Apple Blossom Festival and everything.
Originally they decorated the tower with large vinyl stickers that started to decay after many years of exposure to the elements. Mt. Jackson hired Eric Henn Murals to replace the design with paint applied freestyle. The special paint cost $400 a gallon and should last 30 years. He completed the effort in January 2015 after about three months of work. Henn also received a commission recently to restore the famous Gaffney Peachoid along Interstate 85 in South Carolina, perhaps the most iconic roadside water tower anywhere.
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