Students Create Masonic Mural in Myrtle Beach

Do you have a newer, plain, utilitarian looking temple building that people drive past every day and never notice? There's a way to change that. Here is a perfect example of a lodge and community partnership benefitting each other.

The local students in Coastal Carolina University's Arts 499 'Special Topics in Art' class teamed up with Grand Strand Lodge 392 in North Myrtle Beach. Freemasonry and the lodge provided the inspiration and a very big canvas in the form of a large, blank wall, and the students executed a beautiful, traffic-stopping mural depicting Masonic symbolism, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. (Click the photos to enlarge.)

Janet Blackmon Morgan at the Sun News has posted 13 photos of the student artists at work on the lodge mural as the project nears completion at myrtlebeachonline.com

The mural was designed by the class' lecturer, Brother Brian "Cat" Taylor. He teaches the class each summer semester, and students learn the history and contemporary use of public art, especially in more urban settings. Each year, they also get the practical experience of working on an actual project like this one. 

Taylor teaches true 'street art,' not paint vandalism 101, and murals designed by him and his students dot the landscape around campus and the surrounding towns that make up South Carolina's Grand Strand beach communities. He seems to have a good working relationship with the nearby town of Conway (where the university is located) and others in the area, and his students have executed murals in the past that have been designed as part of supported community projects. Many cities and chambers of commerce are ecstatic to have serious artists decorate blank cinderblock walls (Naperville, Illinois is very supportive of these projects, for example). A call to your local college with an art program could very well yield a happy result. 

(Just be sure you don't run afoul of local zoning and signage laws before you start painting! If your town is restrictive, as an alternative, see if an art class might decorate your lodge room, instead.)

Grand Strand Lodge 392 is located at 919 6th Avenue in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

H/T Ed Potter

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UPDATE 6/22/2017:

I was just sent a link to another project, this one from Greenwood Lodge 253 in Greenwood, Washington. Designed artists Jacob Dixon and James Nielson. (That's a window in the lower right.) According to Dixon's website, it was done in the summer of 2014 and took 50 days to execute.

Then there's this mural of 'Legends of Masons' on the side of Grapevine Lodge 288 in Grapevine, Texas. (I can't find the artist of this one.)

And this one of Prince all on the Prince Hall Public School in Boston, Massachusetts.

The multi-language Masonic wiki website, Friemauer-Wiki has a page dedicated to Masonic  murals and street art HERE.

H/T Christopher Sicurella