Walldog workshop a key learning experience ahead of Mt Barker Mountains and Murals

A new mural adorning the side of Mt Barker’s Old Police Station and Folk Museum has become the seventh Walldogs-style mural in town after a community workshop at the weekend.

The workshop was arranged as part of the 2022 Southern Art and Craft Trail and as a precursor to the Murals and Mountains festival in November.

Resident Walldog David Johnson, who led the workshop, said the mural was a nice gift to JUgive JUto the Plantagenet Historical Society. “They have a large volunteer base who manage the history of the town,” he said.

“To give them something back was a pretty good experience for everybody and everyone was excited to be able to contribute to the community.”

Eight students with various levels of experience travelled from as far as Carnarvon to take part.

Mr Johnson said all of the participants were used to working on smaller scale pieces and it was their first time tackling a project as big as the mural.

“The experience for them was all about getting a small drawing off an A4 piece of paper on to to a large wall,” he said.

“We taught them some methods of transfer from paper to wall and a couple of old signwriter skills that aren’t taught to traditional artist which helps them scale up.

“It’s a technique called pounce patterns which is a traditional signwriting thing that has been around for 100 years and none of them had ever heard of it.”

The mural, which Johnston said would require “a day’s work” before it was complete, pays homage to the building’s history as a former police station.

He said it was an ambitious goal to complete the mural within a day given difficult weather conditions.

“It rained and blew a gale so it was pretty tough conditions,” he said.

“I guess that’s half of the experience though — you can’t let the weather stop you. If you’ve scheduled something in, you can still paint.

“You just have to be a little bit creative to make sure you can protect the area from the elements so we were able to set up some pop-up tents and tarpaulin strung up over the top to provide an area which was out of the rain.

“Generally, at most Walldogs festivals across the world it rains one day or so during most festivals so this was no different.”

Several of the participants have registered to return to put their new skills to use to help a cast of international Walldog artists due to arrive in Mt Barker next month for the festival.

Mountains and Murals festival which will run from November 16-20.