New Passion for Artist: Mural Painting
Recently retired as an artist at MacKenzie-Childs, Dawn Jordan has found a new passion for painting murals
By Joe Sarnicola
Dawn Jordan is an artist with a wide range of talents and interests.
She often combines her love of local history with her creativity.
She was fortunate to have been born into an artistic family. Her grandfather was a skilled boat builder, her grandmother was a landscape painter, her father became well-known in Cayuga County for his caricatures and her sister owns a creative arts business.
Recently retired as an artist at MacKenzie-Childs, she now has more time to pursue her own art projects.
In addition to having inherited artistic skill and being surrounded by art and artists, Jordan studied at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and the Ealing College of Higher Education in London.
“Living and studying in London and South Florida, two very different places, both inspired my horizons, but I definitely learned more about life than art,” she said during a recent interview.
That training led her to become a graphic artist at Cayuga Community College in Auburn where she designed some of its catalogs and brochures. She eventually started her own graphic design business.
In 1995, she received her first commission to paint a mural. The American Legion in Moravia had hired an artist to paint a scene for them, but unfortunately he died before the work was completed. Jordan’s grandmother was asked to complete the mural, but she recommended Jordan instead. Although she had never worked on such a large scale before, she accepted the assignment.
Murals have since been an important part of Jordan’s success and recognition as an artist, with many of the murals being history-based. She painted the Brutus Historical Society building in Weedsport, a boating scene on the Shopping Guide and Press, Inc. building in Port Byron and a Freedom Train scene on a former railroad abutment on Route 31 between Weedsport and Port Byron.
The town of Montezuma has been a strong inspiration for some of her recent work. She had previously painted “The Richmond Aqueduct: Then and Now” for the Montezuma Historical Society, which won the Viewers’ Choice Award at the 2016 Global Mural Conference and Expo in Fairport.
In honor of the town’s bicentennial celebration, she painted a mural on a facsimile boat built in the style of those that traveled on the canal at the Montezuma Heritage Park. That “boat” sometimes serves as a stage for town events.
Her most recent historical project is a bit different from the murals she has created.
“The Erie Canal Marionette Show” tells the story of the Erie Canal from a script she wrote and using puppets and a set she made herself.
“I’ve been working on the Erie Canal show for two years,” she said. “Town Historian Cheryl Longyear said she wanted to celebrate the town’s 200th anniversary. Eventually, I hope to bring the play to area schools.”
In order to broaden her knowledge of puppetry, Jordan attended the International Puppet Festival in Paris in 2017. The first “Festival Mondial des Theatres de Marionnettes” was held in 1961 and has become a bi annual, nine-day event that attracts more than 150,000 visitors. Her first exposure to marionettes happened when she was in her grandparents’ attic and found “Marionettes: Easy to Make! Fun to Use!” a book by Edith Flack Ackerly, which was published in 1929 and not long after that she saw a live puppet show. Her grandmother taught her how to make the costumes for the puppets and her grandfather built her first puppet stage.
Hand puppets are worn like gloves, but marionettes are controlled above the stage by strings connected to various moving parts of the puppets.
“Puppetry is a way I can put a story together with color and action in a small setting. I love stories, music and art. So for me it is all about putting it together. If it is done well, the audience can suspend their reality and it’s kind of magic,” she said.
A performance of the Erie Canal marionette show was part of the Summer Festival of the Arts at Willard Memorial Chapel in Auburn in August.
She has also created backdrops for performances of many local high school plays and musicals. She often reuses some of the panels for the art.
“I paint over the five-foot by 30-foot backdrops from previous shows. I have to work fast, because there is a lot of surface area to paint. I work backstage and I love it,” she said.
Of course, with anything having to do with live performances, things can go wrong. One example happened back on March 13 (Friday the 13th) of 2020 just before a performance of “Matilda, the Musical,” at Auburn Junior High School. After weeks of rehearsals, that was the first and last performance of the show because after that all schools were closed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“After hearing the news of the cancellation, kids and their parents were crying,” she said.
Her most recent mural is painted on the back of a building that has housed several different grocery stores in Auburn, but is now the home of Zen Den Yoga Studio, Sew What! Fabric store and the office of The Citizen, Auburn’s newspaper. The mural can be seen from the parking lot of Willard Memorial Chapel and features crows, which have been roosting in Auburn over the winter for more than 20 years.
“I received permission from the owners, Washington Street Partners. There is no political or historical statement different from any of my other works. This is purely for enjoyment. I painted the crows with human eyes,” she said.
The cinder blocks that make up the wall served as a natural grid, making the scale of the project easier than if she had to create a system allowing her to transfer a drawing into a large-scale painting.
She is also a board member of the Fingerlakes Art Council, whose mission is “to create an environment that supports, fosters, provides and promotes inclusive arts programming open to all residents, artists and visitors throughout the Finger Lakes Region.”
For more information or to view some of her work online, visit streetsmartart.com or email: muralsbydawn@gmail.com.