Way back when, The Lilies Project received approval to resurface the basketball court at London Park and finish it with a mural. I wanted to celebrate the history that James Brown had performed at London School as part of the Chitlin’ Circuit in the Sixties
As far as I know, there is no physical evidence of Brown’s visit, only local lore. “Celebrating Courage” includes an exciting scene where Tony Hairston recalls his father, John L. Hairston, paying Brown after the show. So I thought a basketball court mural would be a fun way to spruce up a much loved, but dilapidated park in Walnut Cove.
With COVID delays, working with various artists fell through. Secretly, or not so secretly, I longed to design the court mural, but the task felt overwhelming. As the budget shifted, it became clear that we were going to have to figure out how to do create the design simply through the resurfacing contract, which includes a background and three colors.
I had Basketball Mural at the top of my list all week. The contract is signed. The resurfacing is being scheduled. Time for a design. Definitely something more than this:
For several months, I had wanted to use the large golden star found on the James Brown’s 20 All-Time Greatest Hits cover. I thought perhaps we could save money by with one color for the star and stenciling on additional components with the community. But as weeks passed and materials costs increased, I signed a three-color contract and thought I am going to make the most of this. Besides, such a massive amount of stenciling would certainly keep me up at night!
Thursday afternoon, I sat down to watch “Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown” to look for inspiration. Henry is always intrigued by a great music documentary, so he joined me while simultaneously searching for concert poster art. I found a concert poster from 1964 with some bright colors that I thought would be great with the light blue background option for the background: the neon pink, green and yellow for the star.
Within minutes, the documentary cut to Brown’s performance on the Ed Sullivan show. The background props looked exactly like the coal ash hex posts with a light blue back ground. The lighting faded out from pink, green and yellow. Perfect!
Suddenly I knew exactly what I hoped to create that tied together James Brown’s story, the coal ash hex posts and our local landscape of the “Three Sisters” of Sauratown Mountains.
With my attempt to drawn in the white lines….
And adding James Brown’s name and date of his performance at London, which would be stenciled. This is a guesstimate. Anyone know the actual year?
Here’s hoping the contractor will say yes this looks great!
