TAC’s first (ever) Mural Project. Known as the PAL Mural (for TAC the PAL acronym stood for Puzzles Accentuate Life) when in actuality the acronym stands for Police Activities League. This mural was created for the PAL Community Center in the Sagner housing development in Frederick Maryland. The project was made up of 15 over-sized puzzle pieces that were each approximately 4’ x 7’. The final size of the mural was approximately 15’ tall by 30’ wide. The mural and all of it’s pieces were painted over the months with help from local school aged children from the Sagner community. David Heatwole directing the painting and designing with Dawn Heatwole assisting with getting the kids introduced to the idea with games and drawing time. This project was created in cooperation with the Frederick Carroll Creek Rotary Club and supported by area businesses.

Participating Collaborators

Participating children came to work with artist David Heatwole in after school workshops to talk about "Character Counts" qualities, and to discuss the types of things they would like to see in their community.  The youth then went to the drawing board and worked with David and his educator wife Dawn Heatwole to develop their ideas as drawings. These drawings were then used by David in coming up with the final design for the mural that was installed in their new community center.
Below are a few of the drawings that came out of the art workshops and were instrumental in the direction Heatwole took in developing the final mural designs.
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GETTING THE MURAL READY

In an ideal Community Collaboration Heatwole would have had other adults helping to prepare the mural surface for the children to paint on, but this wasn't a regular community collaboration for the artist.  This was his first mural and he wanted to be actively involved in making it perfect.

To create the panels for this large mural, artist David Heatwole hand created in Adobe Illustrator each puzzle piece.  He then sent the file to Harbor Sales to be routed out out of 3/4" MDO board.  He then hand filed all of the edges of each piece rounding the straight cut so that it had the feel of a real puzzle.

Collaboration Works!

The image to the right shows one young school aged girl's drawing.  Next to that is Heatwole's under-drawing on a few of the puzzle pieces as it was getting it's first coats of painting.  Notice that Heatwole used the young artist's girls face as well as her watering a garden.
David Heatwole also added a few more elements to the mural's garden including a snail that the girl is protecting with a small umbrella.  This umbrella ties this project back through all of his community collaboration projects back to the original Umbrella Offering created with the volunteers from Turner Ashby High School.