We were so pleased and honored to participate in a custom project with InkDwell using Casart wallcovering for the Cornell University Mural. We’ve been collaborating with artist Jane Kim of InkDwell over the course of the last five years for various custom projects. This latest project took several years to complete beginning in 2014.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is one of the world’s leading institutes focused on bird study. Jane’s mural depicts the 375 million year evolution of birds over 270 species. This is the only mural in the world depicting all the families of modern birds in one place. Between development and painting, the project took more than two years.
To help with the daunting execution, Jane had the brilliant idea to use Casart custom wallcovering as a stencil to quickly paint the large-scale continents in the 70 x 40 foot educational mural depicting the evolution of today’s current birds for Cornell’s Ornithology Department. It was the most efficient method to cover such a large space easily. To help with reducing print and material cost, we printed smaller geographic areas inside of larger ones. This way, stencils could be cut out inside of printed stencils and less material would be wasted for mapping out the continents. This method made Casart’s custom capability less costly than standard printing would have been for this project.
Big world, big wall. Using temporary vinyl is the only way to paint in a map of this scale
This was the first step to getting the mural started. Stenciling the continent backgrounds as well as transferring Jane’s bird illustrations onto the gigantic space took five weeks. Jane and her InkDwell team then had the task of painted at least one bird a day to meet their completion deadline a year later. The video below describes the background behind the project for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Jane Kim is a well-known muralist, excelling in the scientific representation of all Earth’s treasures. You can see her many awe-inspiring projects on her InkDwell website.
Jane, 40 feet up, removing a stencil in Russia’s polar north, under the Kara Sea
Lead artist Danza Chisholm-Sims (L) led the technical, five-week stenciling process, stretching over nearly 3000 square feet of wall space.
The Giant Moa is just one of the birds that depicts the giant scale and sheer amount of work involved.
Jane and the Giant Moa. This bird became extinct some 600 years ago.
Casart wallcoverings were used in the early stage as temporary wallpaper templates for the continents and geographical locations on top of which the birds were painted. The photos below show the stunning result of everyone’s hard work.
Many birds painted by Jane Kim
African Section of mural
What do you think? How did we do? Give it your review and comment below.
You can read more details about this project and our work with InkDwell on our blog.
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