In one mural, the Cat in the Hat reclines. In the one next to him sits Vincent van Gogh. Dinosaurs lumber next to smokestacks, grim, smoky skylines were juxtaposed with blue skies and spring blossoms.
Some pictures were obviously children’s, others, like the detached heads of Princess Diana and Mother Teresa, were the work of mature hands.
Clasped together, the paintings – all 10,712-Guinness-record-breaking feet of them – snaked up a grassy hillside at Barnum Park on Saturday in west Denver, providing a multicolored mystery for westbound drivers speeding past on Sixth Avenue.
The Denver display was the culmination of a seven-year effort by the Art Miles Mural Project, headed by Joanne Tawfilis and her husband, Fouad Tawfilis.
“It’s so wonderful when a human being has such an awesome idea,” said Lannie Garrett. The Denver vocalist had come out to the park with friends to take in the project.
Students from 150 Denver schools contributed, as did Head Start classes, parks and recreation groups and an assortment of people who happened to wander by as dozens of naked canvases lay beckoning in Civic Center on Friday, next to paint and brushes.
Kids here did amazing stuff on the assigned theme, the environment, said Stella Yu, director of a city jobs program for teens and the project’s local coordinator.
“One team even addressed why certain neighborhoods are smelly and others smell nice,” Yu said. “That’s thinking about environmental justice.”
The Denver works hooked up with canvases from as far away as Connecticut, Egypt and Austria.
One from Peru bore wax stains because the street kids who painted it had to work at night, by candlelight, Tawfilis said.
Just for the record, it was not all about breaking the record, Tawfilis said.
“It’s about the process,” she said. It’s about the message, of nonviolence, of love, and of loving and cherishing the planet – not just this Earth Day, but every day, she said.
“And what a perfect place to do it – the Mile High City,” she said.
By “it” Tawfilis meant, of course, breaking the record.
Although it wasn’t all about breaking into the Guinness book, it was still annoying when others kept beating Tawfilis to her goal.
In fact, when Tawfilis checked the Guinness website Tuesday, just to be sure the record would be broken Saturday, the news was bad.
She and a panicked Yu put their heads together, and with the help of everyone who stopped by Civic Center on Friday to paint, got another 3,000 feet of murals done since Tuesday.
So as of Saturday morning, the record was theirs.
And Saturday night, all the canvases were to be rolled up, and loaded onto a truck, waiting to go to their next destination.
Staff writer Karen Aug can be reached at 303-820-1733 or kauge@denverpost.com.
