Based in Atlanta, Megan McKeithan of Visionary Mural Co. paints fine art and trompe l’oeil murals combined with 3D props and sculptures to create complete environments. She also creates props for television and movies filmed in and around Atlanta. Recent projects include two sets of tombstones, one for Vampire Diaries and one for Teen Wolf on MTV…
Megan studied art, art history, architecture, and mural painting at Wellesley College, MIT, and SCAD. Her love of 2D and 3D art continues in her mural painting work after all these years. While painting trompe l’oeil illusions of three-dimensional architectural spaces is a specialty of hers, integrating painted pieces with actual three-dimensional pieces is also one of her favorite challenges…
For example, she recently painted a Salvador Dali-inspired mural on the ceiling of her client’s foyer. Using elements from many of her client’s favorite Dali paintings, Megan added a 3D melting clock suspended from a trompe l’oeil branch across the ceiling. The clock, designed by Megan and sculpted by her good friend Frank Yoculan, appears to hang across the branch in the mural. Megan designed the complete environment of the foyer to be an art salon; her client’s growing modern and contemporary art collection stretches up the walls below the mural. As they add to the collection they will fill all the walls of the “salon,” just as you would see in a traditional palace, villa, chateau or manor collection in Europe. The extruded PVC clock was cut out then sculpted with a special heat molding process. Then Megan painted the clock to match the mural and attached it the ceiling before painting the trompe l’oeil “branch” over it. The best part is that you can see the clock from the front entry of the home, as you look up through the chandelier into the mural, and you can see if from the other side as you come down the stairs; creating it in three dimensions brings the mural out into the space and changes the understanding of 3D space, which fits in perfectly with Salvador Dali’s design aesthetic…
Frank used the same heat molding process to create the over-sized leaves in the Avatar-inspired fantasy movie set Megan created with 5 other companies for The Next Cool Thing event in Atlanta. Megan painted a 10x x 20’ mural on canvas and stretched it across a self-standing moveable curved wooden wall Frank designed and built. Frank designed the huge custom leaves to mimic the ones where the Navi slept in James Cameron’s Avatar. Another great team member, Kass Wilson, created a custom iridescent painted finish for the leaves, giving them an elegant glow…
In addition to the large leaves, Frank and Megan collaborated on a three-dimensional Ikran sculpture integrated into the mural. Frank sculpted Fred the flying Ikran, and Megan painted him into the mural. The sculpture actually moves when you touch it, giving a life-like quality to the artwork. Fred was a big hit at the events, with thousands of people having their pictures taken in front of the mural with him…
Frank also created 3D hanging mountains that Megan translated into the mural, continuing the line of mountains in the real world into the distance of the painted world. In addition, the team created three-dimensional sculptures of fantasy creatures, including fiber-optically lit seedpods. Also included in the mural is a beautiful textural branch painted by Megan’s teammate Kass Wilson. It’s actually a 3D texture painted on a separate material but attaches to the mural on canvas once it’s been stretched across the wooden wall. They also attached faux painted foliage to help continue the 3D effect. Kass also painted 3D silk flowers and plants to look like they belonged in the fantasy set and placed them in front of the atmospheric mural so that the 3D world and 2D mural seamlessly work together and create the illusion of distance. Frank even created glowing cypress knees to help add to the otherworldly atmosphere of the environment they created…
Check out this link to see more about this project: Avatar Mural Project and this website to see even more about how they created all of the fantasy movie prop elements: http://InspiredByAvatar.com …
Clients have also asked Megan to incorporate their own 3D props in some of her pieces. In this French chateau wine cellar mural project, she included the beer barrel and antique wooden doors in the mural. She painted the architecture in the mural surrounding the doors to appear to support the doors, and the trompe l’oeil stonework to appear to surround the barrel…
In Megan’s Peter Rabbit Mural (inspired by the work of Beatrix Potter), she painted a 3D hot air balloon over the crib into the ceiling mural. The same seamstress who made the window treatments and bedding created the underside of the silk canopy. Megan then painted the “top” of the balloon to appear to stretch up into the sky on the ceiling and become the “hot air balloon” attached to the crib “basket.”…
Another interesting project Megan created was a sky mural backdrop for a sheep and mountain installation in a trophy room. This client has a massive collection of animals in his trophy room, but had to create an addition to house the newest sheep, so he asked Megan to paint a sky mural that would work on the left side with desert sheep and the right side with artic sheep. Megan painted some of the 3D yellow leaves in the mural to help coordinate the actual exhibit with the painted mural. She also transitioned the sky from a more cerulean blue in the desert side to a more cobalt blue with brighter white in the clouds in the arctic side…
Painting this project reminded Megan of early in her career when she worked for Rebecca Fuller of RAF Models and Displays in Winston-Salem, NC. Rebecca built models and sculptures for National and State Park visitor centers, and for museums and corporations. She has an incredible sculptural background and Megan was lucky enough to get to know her years before when she babysat for Rebecca’s young children, then return from college and work in the shop learning 3D fabrication…
Rebecca asked her to help paint a 3D model of Chickamauga National Military Park. Megan built a few models while studying architecture at MIT and Wellesley, but had never seen an airbrush, let alone worked with automotive paint, bondo, and fiberglass, but jumped at the chance to try something new. Something new turned out to be donning a gas mask and working outdoors, attempting to airbrush a ten foot long, 300-pound fiberglass sculpture teetering on an unwieldy cart liberated from the local hardware store, while combating the weather and desperately trying to achieve the perfect balance of paint and thinner that would actually work without blowing away or gumming up the paint gun and splattering permanent blobs across the entire model. Let’s just say the learning curve was pretty steep. Fortunately for Megan, she was great at matching colors and painting and all of the shops projects had to be painted, so she stayed on and got better!…
Among the museums, national parks, and companies they worked with was Krispy Kreme, their hometown institution that was going public. Megan sculpted four three-foot wide fiberglass doughnuts for two kiosk carts they were building – one to for Penn Station in New York, and one to be used in the filming of Primary Colors…
While some of the following 3D projects aren’t combined with murals, they are part of larger exhibits and show some of the types of 3D props and sculptures Megan has worked on over the years…
For example, the Natchez Visitor’s Center model shown here includes several thousand buildings on a topographic map of the city, highlighting the location of several antebellum homes. Located on the Natchez Trace on the Mississippi River, the visitor’s center also houses a small model Megan and Rebecca created of Frogmore Plantation, located just across the river in Louisiana. Megan also touched up a printed mural for the museum exhibit project, but this was in the days before digital, so no photo…
Photo credits:
Natchez Visitor’s Center: Used with permission, copyright: http://www.DeepFriedKudzu.com
Woman with Natchez model found on: http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/p/m/188c28/
Frogmore Plantation: Used with permission: http://ontheroadwiththeroses.blogspot.com/
Megan also helped sculpt and paint this topographic map of Cape Lookout National Seashore. This was in the days before Google, so you couldn’t just grab a satellite image on line. Megan and Rebecca actually got to fly over the national park with the park service pilot, taking pictures for reference for the model. And special NASA images were snail mailed to them for use as reference on the look of the ocean from space…
Other projects Megan contributed to include a bronze sculpture for Manassas Battlefield Visitor’s Center in Manassas, VA, a bronze sculpture of the fort at Castillo San Marcos, in St. Augustine, FL, and (not pictured) a model and diorama at Ice Age National Park in Cambellsport, WI, and museum exhibits at MESDA and The Reynolda House Museum of American Art. Check out more of Rebecca Fuller’s incredible projects including her specialty, tactile exhibits for people with special needs: http://www.rafmodels.com/index.html
Photo credit, San Marcos: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Painting and sculpting mural & 3D props with high school apprentices…
One of Megan’s earliest mural projects combined with 3D sculpture was Bethabara National Historic Site, where she designed a two-story interior 2000ft² mural with 3-D trees, beaver pond, and interactive wildlife pieces, then painted the project with high school and college apprentices in a wonderful art job training program called Artiva. Rebecca and many friends and even Megan’s parents pitched in to help on this massive undertaking, a project first conceived by Rod Meyers, the director of the park. When he approached the Arts Council with the idea, they called Megan to come back from Atlanta to do it; no one else was able (or crazy?) enough to try to pull it off. Together they created this complete environment designed to house a program called Project Wild in which school children visited the historic site and learned about their environment then entered their findings in a program shared around the globe with other school children on the early Internet…
The mural design tells the history of the Bethabara settlement, through 400 years and 4 seasons. As you walk around the room you see the trees, plants, and animals that are found through out the park as well as the development of the historic settlement through the unfolding of the seasons. Megan and her students built a three dimensional beaver pond coming out from the mural onto the floor of the room, as well as a two-story tall tree, combining a real tree that had fallen in the park, along with a paper mache trunk and silk leaves amongst plywood cut out painted leaves. They also cut out tree patterns in two other places and integrated them into the architecture and painted the upstairs loft to look like a tree house, complete with windows. The mural wraps the entire interior and creates a complete artistic environment. Megan and the apprentices particularly enjoyed combining 3D props and mural painting in the beaver pond area. They used 3D birds and insects found at a local craft store and in the 3D environment. They even placed a bird’s nest in the tree…
The apprentices even painted animals on 25 small plastic squares with backgrounds matching the mural so that the school children using the exhibit could interact with it by figuring out where to match the pieces in the mural. The pieces adhered to the wall with Velcro, which the apprentices painted to match as well, camouflaging the locations of the pieces and making a fun interactive game for the students…
As far back as this project goes (1998) began has enjoyed creating murals with 3D props and sculptures. The challenge of rendering three dimensions in two dimensions is always a part of her murals, but adding the actual 3D sculptures and props makes it even more exciting! See more of Megan’s work at http://www.visionarymuralco.com
