Hmmmm... A corkboard. In an ice cream shoppe. Only one logical course of action seems available...

No, that's not the name of a prog-rock jam band I founded in my garage during those fruitful summer months of yesteryear.

The initial seed of the Magical Ice Cream Crayon Mural Project was birthed, screaming and mucus-encrusted, from my mind shortly after my return home for summer. After a jovial afternoon doing one of our frequent go-to-Borders-and-read-alot-of-graphic-novels-and-don't-buy-anything exercises, comrade Max and I headed across the street to the trendy new Mitchell's ice cream establishment. I got some swell banana ice cream, and Max got something awful, with bubbles, and we sat ourselves down.

What was unique and intriguing about Mitchell's was the bulletin board. For whatever reason, an extruded plastic toy boat filled with a modest amount of crayons and some typing paper was placed on a table, with the intent that jovial young folk would draw charming renditions of the store's logo or its noble founders, or something, and pin them up. I drew Donatello (a difficult feat, as I discovered there was no purple crayon AFTER I'd already drawn the Bo...what was a man to do?!), and pinned him up.

As I drew my turtle, Max mocked my inability to find proper colors, and my general clumsiness with the .5" long dull crayon. I bitched and made excuses about how at ART SCHOOL I got used to drawing on BIG sheets of paper, and 8.5"x11" wasn't really cutting it. It was very possibly this commnet that made me realize a bigger drawing could be made, employing a grid system...we could make a really big eyesore! I proposed the idea to make a mural to Max, and he agreed that it would not only be enjoyable, but would most likely confuse or upset the quaint folk who worked there.

So a tiny, tiny island is deforested and highly endangered (and cute and fluffy) lemurs are turned out on their ears so that I can eat vanilla ice cream? Keen!

A week or so later, Macks and I congregated to plan the composition of our masterwork. We considered employing this forum of ideas and expression to expound upon important sociopolitical matters. We discussed exposing the human rights infringements conducted by the very clothing and other trendy stores just across the street at the shopping center, or perhaps discussing the very environmental travesties performed by the establishment itself (see sidebar). After carefully measuring the pros and cons of what message we could convey with this powerful medium, Max and I opted to draw Mr. T holding an ice cream cone. Our only hope was that it wouldn't be perceived as too controversial for a public exhibition.

In this photo, you see a little container of crayons tastefully placed on the table. However, there is NO PAPER! How is an artist supposed to work!?

We went to Mitchell's in high hopes, with our plan clearly in mind (no preliminary sketch was made, as we wanted the entire physical process to be done on site with the onsite materials...this would be utterly playing by the Mitchell's rules...). But unfortunately disaster struck...There was no paper to accompany the scant supply of crayons. We had nothing to draw on, and to bring in auxiliary paper would be contrary to our very important artistic plan of using only Mitchell's stuff. Crestfallen, we left the shoppe.

About one month, one-third of a game of Vagrant Story, and one trip to Germany (on Max's part) later, we decided to give it another go. Comrade Rob was over, trying to complete/make presentable a hastily-filmed set of music videos (an impossible feat, as Rob's definition of 'complete' requires at least 75% use of fast and/or slow motion...and maybe a few star wipes...), so when Max arrived with the query "Wanna make a mural?", Rob was avaiable to assist.

Carefully rendered preliminary sketch, with divider gridlines.

Max, Rob and I arrived at the place, and I hastily threw together a preliminary doodle, so we'd know what thing to put on what sheet. Then we got to work. Here's a trendy photo montage of the process, which is prolly more desriptive than any number of poorly made attempts at mad punnery...

Insert trendy 'hard-at-work-photo-montage' music. I recommend No One Knows my Plans.

Max puts up sheet one... Rb puts up some sheets. By this point, Max had been granted the power of super speed by a highly intelligent being from beneath the Earth's crust. This phenomenon is visible in the above photo. And I finish the the ol' guy off.

Then we pinned the mutha up...

And when all was said and done, we were...erm...done:

The completed mural. At one point, we considered making something big enough to cover the entire board, but a.)we hadn't the time and b.)the Mitchell's people might have gotten mad if we covered all of the drawings done by the little children who were intended to use it...

It was a beautiful thing. We just stood and stared at it for a while, saying nothing, basking in the glow of a job well done. Or at least bigly done. (That's what really counts in art...) Finally we took leave of our creation, leaving it alone with the public. Sniff. It was very emotional, like when a baby bird leaves the nest and thumbtacks itself to a corkboard for the first time, or something.