Paint on State returns for Heritage Days

By Kathryn Menue

EDITOR

After being such a big hit in its premier year at Heritage Days 2015, Paint on State returned with a bigger crowd of participants leading the painting event down State Street in Belvidere. The event was held on Saturday, June 25 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., giving each artist plenty of time to finish their great work of art.

For only $5, anyone and everyone came out to make their mark on State Street.

The $5 gave each painter the necessary tools to create their masterpiece: including paints, brushes, chalk to outline their work, buckets of water to clean supplies, and their 4ft.x4ft. paved easel on State Street.

“Together, we will transform Belvidere’s State Street to a colorful patchwork of art,” Paint on State’s motto read.

Participants did create a wide variety of art including: cartoons such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Spiderman, and Pokémon characters, nature scenes like forests and flower designs, animals like an African elephant, favorite band art like signs for Panic! at the Disco, video game mascots such as Vault Boy from the Fallout universe, organization logos like the 4-H four leaf clover, skylines with tropical, beach settings, zombies reminiscent of the Walking Dead television series, Disney characters like Mickey Mouse, other animated movie characters like the Minions from Despicable Me, along with other movie characters such as BB-8 from Star Wars, abstract art scenes worthy of a nod from Jackson Pollock, and imaginative creations such as paintings with mystic unicorns or elephants flying with butterfly wings.

Artists took their time to create perfect artwork that matched the visions in their heads to make their own unique stamp on State Street.

Since each 4ftx4ft square was within a giant four square, friends and family members could paint together. Some groups took this to their advantage to create a giant painting out of the four squares.

Others took their four squares to create scenes connected to each other while staying true to their own design. For example, some painters created their own nature scenes, but connected their paintings with the other surrounding paintings by matching up the lines of the sun in each square.

At the end of the day Saturday, June 25, there were over 520 paintings covering State Street from the State Street Bridge to the stoplight at the corner of State Street and Lincoln Avenue.

All of these paintings were made possible through the generous sponsorship of local businesses and organizations including: City of Belvidere, Slick Nickels, Ace Hardware, Midwesternal Photography, PNC Bank, The Boone County Shopper, Locust Street Heritage Press, and the Boone County Arts Council.

For more information, visit: www.paintonstate.com or like Paint on State on Facebook.