After a long drive on extensive Route 33, exiting onto East State Street will bring drivers face to face with one of the brightest sites Athens offers: “A Celebration of Children,” a mural created by Mandi Caskey and commissioned by Athens County Children’s Services.
The mural lines the underpass right off the exit and covers the wall with vibrant colors and five children’s faces, cartoonish both in their design and their exuberant expressions. Each child is depicted differently; one plays with paper planes while another decorates a Christmas tree; one revels in an array of pinwheels (each designed by a student in Athens County) while another presents a sandwich to the viewer. The most meaningful depiction is the fifth child, placed in the middle of the wall holding a miniaturized building.
According to Matt Starkey, ACCS public information officer and community events coordinator, the building represents the ACCS’s old children’s home which stood in the exact same spot as the mural before the highway was constructed.
“We wanted to represent what we did and where we came from, but also … on top of that we wanted it to make people feel good inside when they saw it,” Starkey said.
These parameters were some of the only instructions Caskey received when she was contacted to submit a proposal. The seasoned muralist followed a similar design process for this project as she does with most of her corporate clients.
“(ACCS) wants to convey a specific story, so they give me those themes, but I get to have full say over the design, and I pretty much just tell them the story of why my piece relates to what they want,” Caskey said.
Caskey discovered her passion for murals while studying fine arts at the Columbus College of Art and Design, but not within the school’s four walls.
“(CCAD) didn’t really teach murals,” she said. “If anything, they taught people not to paint on walls, it’s kind of against the whole school’s policy. But I started dating a graffiti writer and on one of our first dates he took me out to paint an abandoned tunnel. It was my first time using spray paint, it was my first time doing anything large and whatever I wanted to do, and pretty much that was it for me.”
Spray paint went on to become Caskey’s “golden product” and was the main tool used for the final details of the mural. Caskey’s assistant on the project, Liv Morris, was able to learn about the use of spray paint while helping with and observing the mural as it came to life.
“She did all the detail work … I did all the big surfaces, the easy stuff,” Morris said.
Morris met Caskey working on another project in Columbus a few years ago and the two became instant friends. Morris graduated from Ohio University in 2016 and was thus Caskey’s obvious choice for the assistant position.
“I also helped her with liaisoning if people came up and wanted to talk about the mural or ask her questions,” Morris said. “When Mandi is painting she’s in the zone, and I understand it completely being an artist myself … but in a public space like we were in, everybody wanted to stop and ask questions and so I was there to mediate that.”
The project began with a power washing of the wall before establishing the base color and drawing the outline from a projection. Although big projects like this weren’t always Caskey’s passion, they are second nature to her now.
“It’s one of those things where you have it down to a science,” Caskey said.
The project began during the first week of May and the official unveiling occurred June 7. Although a majority of the work is credited to Caskey and Morris, Starkey recognized the involvement of numerous players, from the Ohio Department of Transportation to Mayor Steve Patterson to a Sherwin-Williams Paints representative.
“It was really cool having everyone on board because we weren’t fighting through red tape or anything,“ Starkey said. “Everyone was kind of like ‘well, this sounds like a cool project, we’ll do what we can to make it happen.’"
The message behind the mural helped inspire all the participating parties to make it happen, including Morris.
“I feel really connected to Children’s Services and just any service that is bringing a community together, and to have art involved with that was just the icing on the cake,” Morris said.
