[MUSIC] >> Art is all around us.

[MUSIC] It can be in sculptures, paintings or photographs like these on display at the Little Egypt Art Association in Marion.

[MUSIC] But today we're going to think bigger.

[MUSIC] Much bigger.

[MUSIC] We're looking at an art form that actually dates back to prehistoric times, and one that is gaining in popularity across southern Illinois.

The mural.

[MUSIC] It's been said every picture tells a story.

These murals are no exception.

I'm Mark Kiesling.

Come with us.

As we travel through several communities to feature the larger than life work of brilliant local artists who dream and paint big.

[MUSIC] It's our latest trip along the Illinois backroads.

[MUSIC] You can find murals like these throughout Illinois.

Today, we're featuring murals along the route 13 corridor and the work of four local artists.

[MUSIC] We start in Marion with mural artist Chris Killman.

Marion is a city that boasts nearly 30 murals.

This one, on the side of the Little Egypt Art Association building, was painted in 2009 by Killman and more than 30 volunteers.

It's one of the oldest murals in Marion.

It's been said that every mural tells a story.

So what is the story behind this mural?

Well.

>> We all debated at a board meeting.

What the mural is going to be about.

And here's the good part.

I said nothing draws the human eye.

Like other humans.

And a disaster.

So I combined humans and a disaster.

I thought, okay, guys, this is how I'm going to design the mural.

I'm going to create a disaster on the town square.

And then.

And then I'm going to populate it with people who are the people going to be.

And the board immediately said past presidents.

So these are all past presidents of the organization up to the point that we painted it.

Now, we've had some presidents after that, and they're wondering how I'm going to get them in there somewhere else.

>> Kilman has painted nearly 30 murals throughout southern Illinois, including this one at Woods Corner in Gallatin County, highlighting local tourist attractions.

His work is also found in Herrin.

One promotes the long standing community celebration Herrin Festa Italiana.

Another honors our nation's veterans at the Doughboy Statue and Veterans Memorial on Park Avenue.

Yet another features the high school's tiger mascot in an alley off Monroe Street.

Killman began seriously pursuing the art form after retiring from a career at the federal prison.

>> My first real major project was I was put together a team and we painted six murals in Metropolis.

Once we got that one under my belt, I thought, yeah.

Then this one came next.

>> Before beginning a mural, Killman preps the wall by painting it with white primer.

He then projects his design onto the building.

At night.

>> You may have a hard time seeing where you're at at night on a on a dark wall.

But if you got a bright white wall, the Sharpie just stands right out and you know right where your lines are at and you can stay with it.

Uh, so this mural we had to project from across the street over here next to the vault.

So it took about two nights to project this mural because there is a lot of detail.

So you have to project at night in order to see the image.

And then when you paint, is it like an all day project for several days?

Yeah.

We you're just painting when the weather's good.

Mhm.

Uh, we love days like this.

You know this is great.

>> Like many mural artists, Kilman likes to hide images inside the larger painting.

From names of donors to animals to his own arm holding a paintbrush amid a pile of bricks.

>> We have this big brick pile.

We can hide a lot of things in there.

I mean, there's the mouse right there.

There's the crayon box right there.

Somebody wanted a cardinal.

We may start a new game around Southern Illinois like a scavenger hunt with murals.

Go find the hidden items.

Right before I get ready to paint a mural.

I always ask one this one question would you like me to hide something in the mural?

And their eyes get, oh really?

We can hide things in the mural?

I said, yeah, I'll put some stuff in there if you want it.

And I had this one woman come out with a whole scroll.

Oh my.

I'm like, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute.

That's a lot of work.

Can you narrow that down just a little bit, you know, but, uh, yeah, I've hidden things in murals all over southern Illinois.

>> Killman tells me he took up this art form for the challenge, but says there is also a joy in seeing the reactions of people passing by.

Perhaps his favorite reaction came from a woman in Carterville.

She and her husband own a set of storage buildings where Chris painted a series of murals.

>> We're getting close to nearing finishing this mural and the Christie from the City Council comes up to me and said, Chris, you're going to put a name on this, uh, flower shop that we painted a fake flower shop on there.

And I said, well, I guess I could.

She said, could you name the flower shop?

Like Blooms by Olivia, the daughter that they'd lost at birth.

And I looked at her and I said, yeah, I can, I can put anything you guys want on there.

Uh, his wife didn't know we were doing this.

And so I painted Blooms by Olivia, like on the front window of the glass of the fake flower shop that we painted on there.

And then I just got it on the on the wall.

I guess somebody alerted her that the mom that lost her daughter, Olivia.

And she pulled up on the other side of the road.

I just happened to turn around and look over there across the street, and she was just crying her eyes out, and she got out of the car, and I thought, I'm not sure how this is going to go down.

And she just said, I want to thank you so much.

That is so beautiful.

I can't believe you guys did that.

And I got the biggest hug and tears were flowing on me and her, and it was a waterworks opened up.

So it was one of those touching moments where art really strikes emotions.

Yes.

And it was, it was, it was a moment.

It was it was a real moment for me.

When you touch somebody that deeply, it it kind of it makes it all worthwhile.

>> Another local artist started her craft early in life.

Her name is Maddie Deiters.

[MUSIC] >> So I would say I came out of the womb with a crayon in my hand.

I was always an art child.

I had my own little art desk and my own art supplies, and I just draw all day, every day.

It was my passion as a as a kid.

>> Maddie became an innocent and naive mural artist at the age of 14.

And this mural behind us.

This was your first mural?

>> My very first mural.

And what?

A first mural.

50ft tall is crazy.

>> So what made you undertake something this huge to start with?

>> I think a little bit of stupidity.

I was pretty ignorant whenever I was 13.

It was the winter before the summer that I painted this.

My parents were like, hey, do you have any interest in murals?

And I was like, what's a mural?

I don't know.

And I just made designs and I submitted them, and I had no idea that I'd get it.

And I didn't understand how much work it would be.

So if I had been an adult, maybe I would have never tried.

Which is a little sad, but I'm glad that I had the childish stupidity to.

Yeah, there's something to be said for a little bit.

>> A little bit of childhood ignorance on maybe what the real world is like.

>> Definitely.

>> But it's beautiful.

And what does it represent?

What can you tell us about this?

>> So it represents the northern Italian immigration to America and their role in coal mining as an occupation, because coal mining is really big in this area specifically.

and there's a lot of the northern Italian immigration.

And so as the waves go across, it transitions from the Italian flag to the American flag.

And it has the boats and it incorporates the deck as part of the people waving goodbye.

>> Other murals soon followed, including one even larger than the first.

It's found on Court Street, right across from the Marion Fire Station.

This mural honors the US military police and, of course, firefighters.

>> I wanted to do something to support our local our local first responders.

So I worked with it was first the fire station that I worked with through the city, and then I worked with the owner of the building.

His name is Ron Osmond.

He's a lawyer for Marion.

Um, and we got to make something truly special and honor everybody first responders, branches of the military, something patriotic.

>> So and it's obviously special to local veterans, with many expressing their gratitude.

>> I got a lot of veterans wanting to wanting to thank me for representation for them.

I got actually, strangely enough, a lot of cards were given to me with like their personal story on the inside.

So that was really special.

>> Did you have.

>> Help on that.

>> I couldn't drive at that point.

So my my parents were with me every single day.

Okay.

For safety reasons.

And also it's something fun to do for them.

>> Since those first two murals, Matty has created larger than life works of art throughout the area, including this one on the side of the Irma C Hayes Center in Carbondale, honoring the facility's namesake.

There are several more located throughout Jackson County.

One that I love in Murfreesboro is the mural of the deer looking into the field camera.

Tell us about that mural.

>> I love that mural.

It was my first mural that I got to incorporate something that I liked because I love nature.

If you give me free rein, I 100% is.

I'm gonna add nature to it.

Um, so it was kind of the first one that I was given a little bit more creative freedom, and I really enjoyed that.

>> Okay.

And one of my wife's favorites, her being a retired librarian, is the book mural behind the Carbondale Public Library.

And you did that one as well with with help from other artists, right?

>> Yes.

So I got to through a grant, I got to collaborate with a man named Jamal, and he was great to work with.

He is a local from Murfreesboro, actually, so it was super fun to collaborate and have an assistant for that job.

That job was super special because the community got to vote on what the books were.

>> Perhaps her favorite mural is this one in her hometown.

It honors Marion's sister city of Konni town in Japan, the country where Maddie's grandmother comes from.

>> What this is representing is in Konni town.

Once a year they have a festival where they have this big giant boat filled with lanterns, one for every day of the year.

And it goes down the river and the red bridge raises.

And so you can see that lantern boat in the Red bridge raising so it can go through.

And then the next morning it goes back, but covered with cherry blossoms.

And so it's.

>> All in a like in origami.

>> Yes.

So I wanted to portray it with that.

Um, yeah.

>> Matty has documented some of her work on her three line art Facebook page and YouTube channel, like this Buckminster Fuller mural she created in Carbondale.

How have you grown as an artist?

>> Um, I think I've definitely become more resilient and learned how to balance my schedule because I used to think, I have a mural.

I have to get it done.

Everything else is dropped.

Um, so I definitely learned that the second thing that you wouldn't think of is, um, bringing chapstick and sunscreen.

I got very burnt in my four years of painting murals.

>> So our next artist is Josh Benson when he's not overseeing operations at the Marion Cultural and Civic Center, Benson is often painting.

You can find his murals throughout the city, like this one on East Main, highlighting a familiar neighbor or this tribute to the Beatles.

On Union Street.

Or is that Abbey road?

We caught up with Josh in front of one of his favorite works, the Anthony Bourdain Mural, commissioned by the owners of Seasoning Bistro.

>> I sent them this design as a first draft.

They loved it, and we never did anything past that.

And I think that really came from it being something that I personally was so passionate about and loved so much myself that that the design, the aesthetic and the feel really came through as a sentiment towards Anthony Bourdain and respect for Anthony Bourdain.

>> To set the atmosphere for painting Bourdain's image, Benson used a technique that helps him better understand his subject.

>> I want to have him in my head as I'm doing the work.

And so for this one, I had his audiobooks playing.

Um, and I would kind of sometimes change out of that to, uh, a playlist on Spotify that I found that was all background music for his TV shows.

>> Okay.

>> And that he was part of curating and selecting.

And so it was between his music selections and and his voice and his stories in my head the entire time to to maintain his essence as I'm putting him onto the wall.

>> Do you use a similar process in your other murals?

>> I do, um, uh, in in the Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington mural.

It was all playlists of their music or playlists of modern artists covering their songs in different ways.

Um, so they were there.

Art was in my mind and in my head the entire time that I was working on them.

There's another mural on Union Street Arts that has a floating yellow umbrella in it with purple rain coming down, and that's a reference to Prince.

And so we were we had found the this YouTube playlist of from YouTube music of club live club recordings of Prince jamming in clubs to where it's not his final recorded music, it's his in the moment improvisation that was playing the entire time as we were doing that one.

>> So how did Marian become a hub for murals?

>> Chris Coleman had the initial concept.

Whenever they did the Little Little Egypt Arts piece.

Um, he really wanted to start it as a full movement in Marian.

That was all the way back in 2011 and it just never quite took off.

But he had that concept.

>> Eventually, the concept did take off during the Covid epidemic of 2020, when many businesses shut down.

Some, like the Civic Center, decided to use that time to make improvements.

>> We wanted to beautify the alley, which is the walkway from a lot of parking to get to the Civic Center, and so we put up a mural in that alley.

I worked with Sean Vincelette to design and come up and paint, and I jumped on the wall with him.

And my background is scenic design, lighting design.

And so scenic painting and mural painting are really the exact same thing.

It's all large format, large scale art.

And so it was just a natural step.

And once I did that first one, I just took off from there and and everything really sourced from the Paradise Alley mural, uh, that started in September of 2020.

>> Other murals soon followed.

Benson says the one of Satchmo and the Duke on the bias building was actually a big stepping stone in his progress as a mural artist.

>> That was actually the second mural that I ever painted, and the first one that I kind of went into design and solo, uh, concept design and painting solo, along with assistance from Luke O'Neill.

Uh, and, uh, and that one, really, that one was a a proof to myself of the artist that I was.

>> And it helped prove to others that mural art was a big opportunity to expand the appreciation of art and to attract tourists.

>> Whenever we started doing these large, large format murals, that's when everything took off throughout the rest of southern Illinois.

>> Not everyone was on board at first.

Some saw the mural movement as a threat to the city's historic buildings.

>> There were a lot of people, um, older, established people in the community who were afraid that it was going to look like we were putting up graffiti and, and, uh, and it wasn't going to look intentionally placed.

Um, and, and as, as we created more murals, uh, I think that a lot of that doubt went away, and it became very evident that literally, the face of our downtown downtown was being brought back to life with color and vibrancy and art.

>> That vibrancy can be seen in this mural in nearby Harrisburg, Benson partnered with Arts Co of Saline County to create this stunning work.

>> They wanted it to be Southern Illinois, really Saline County centric.

And so you'll see aspects of farming, tourism, which is camel rock.

And then the old coal mining tipple that that taps into the coal mining history of Saline County.

Um, and then to bring the vibrant part of it, we set this bright hyper color sunrise as the background to really set it off and bring that life into that spot that they wanted.

[MUSIC] >> The work of Wall Dog Christine Bronc Deshazo is evident as soon as you drive into her hometown of Murfreesboro.

She painted this welcome sign and the mural next to the bronze statue of the Big Muddy Monster at the intersection of routes 13 and 127.

>> So this one happened because the mayor will called and he said, I want a big muddy monster mural.

I want a retro route 66.

You've got to stop and see the statue.

I want something?

That's a photo op?

I said, can I design the big Muddy monster from the records of the Big Muddy monster, where he's my drawing, my interpretation from the police records.

It has the romance in it.

>> Yes.

>> And then the classic car, the river that the couple was parking on when they encountered the Big Muddy monster.

I said, I'll do it as long as I can.

Also put a sign in there pointing people to food, shopping, art and murals downtown.

>> There you go.

>> So yeah, this one happened fast and it was a lot of fun.

>> So and speaking of murals downtown, let's go take a look at some of the other work you've done in downtown Murfreesboro.

>> Sounds great.

[MUSIC] >> Christine has been involved in so many murals, she's lost count of the actual number.

She started as an old school sign painter.

>> I started sign painting in 1978 with Weatherford Signs in Carbondale as a college student and going out all across southern Illinois.

We painted Coke, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, doctor Pepper logos all over the walls of southern Illinois.

>> Besides painting nearly two dozen local murals, Christine has helped create several outside the area with a group called the Wall Dogs.

>> So the Wall Dogs came to be out of a group called the letterheads.

The letterheads are the keepers of the craft where we are the old school sign writers, um, that are teaching the next generation.

Um, 35 years ago, Nancy Bennett from Centerville, Iowa, had somebody that wanted murals.

She put together a group of the letterhead that were also good pictorial artists, and they produced several murals in a town.

>> The Wall Dogs have completed mural projects in nearly 30 towns across the nation.

>> Generally, it takes 2 to 3 years to put an event together, because we generally have 200 to 250 artists come from upwards of nine different countries.

Wow.

They give up their time.

They pay their own way.

Our time for the community is as a volunteer, but the community feeds us and houses us.

>> Back in her hometown, Christine has several murals.

She helped with this one on 13th Street, touting Murfreesboro as American as apple pie.

Another highlights the city's annual Apple Festival and one of my favorites, the mural on 14th Street, where the red pickup appears to be driving out of the historic black and white background.

Another is found in Carl Lee Park.

>> Um, so there's this beautiful park.

It was a grocery store turned into a youth and rec center, and we needed to do something with this wall.

So my vision was to do something that visually extended the park, because it was a small park and something that looked like you were looking through the wall, and that the trees that are on the next block were actually part of the park and just an extension.

I wanted it very trompe l'oeil, but with a bit of fantasy to it.

I've always been in love with Walt Disney's colorization of Bambi.

So the background is very much inspired by it, by Bambi.

Um, I wanted that feeling that you could just keep walking on the other side of the fountain and take that leap and just step right into the wall.

>> Wow.

>> People visiting Carbondale by train can see Christine's work inside the station.

A mural depicting the city's railroad history.

Christine's visual storytelling can also be seen on buildings throughout Carbondale.

>> The Carbondale Conscientious is about saving the monarch butterfly, so that's still telling a story.

The milkweed in the background is what we all need.

You know, we need more fields of milkweed to save the monarchs.

The train station interior one.

Um, the Logan one at Woodlawn Cemetery.

Most of the murals.

I do have hours and hours and hours of historical research.

>> That research led her to a photo of a bugler, which she included in her Woodlawn Cemetery mural, not knowing that bugler was actually a local man, Calvin Scott.

>> That was just, um, an act of God.

It was a God thing that he is in that mural.

I was doing my research.

I, I like a blend of contemporary and historical.

I like a graphic element mixed with a historical element.

And I was doing my research and found a picture of him online, and I just saw where I wanted to put him, how I wanted to lay it out.

And then they brought this up while I was painting, and he cried.

He had no idea that he was on this mural, and he just kept saying, that's me.

Like, why did you put me on there?

That's true.

It was meant to be.

>> Yeah.

>> For Christine and these other local artists, their work is largely about promoting something bigger than themselves, their communities, and the beauty of southern Illinois.

>> It really does promote tourism.

And it really, I believe, has become a vital part of southern Illinois.

And not just pride, because we live in one of the most beautiful places in the United States.

So I think it uplifts and gives us all pride, but it's it's helping to promote the small businesses and keep our towns alive and see fresh growth.

[MUSIC] >> As you travel throughout the state, take time to enjoy the beauty around you, including these larger than life works of art, adding color and creativity to your journey on the Illinois backroads.

[MUSIC] To learn more about murals in Southern Illinois, visit any of these sites.

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