Artist Steven Payne of Apache Junction, Ariz., has arrived in Hot Springs to spruce up the chipped and weathered mural that graces the north side of the historic Malco Theater.

Payne’s landmark mural is a giant painted filmstrip made up of a number of frames that each illustrate an Academy-Award winning documentary that has been screened at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Institute’s annual film festival, HSDFI board member and project coordinator Sissi Bennett of Hot Springs said Thursday.

“This is so important. I’m on a bandstand about getting it preserved,” Bennett said.

The mural’s varied subjects, such as boxer Muhammad Ali, photographer Richard Avedon’s model Dovima posed with elephants, and actor Orson Wells, rise two-stories high in the parking lot at HSDFI.

“The mural project is one of the many parking lot improvements HSDFI will be working on throughout the summer,” Malinda Herr-Chambliss, executive director, said.

Payne, formerly of Hot Springs, originally painted the gigantic black-and-white filmstrip 11 years ago for the HSDFI.

Thousands of motorists each day can view the landmark from a number of vantage points.

Earlier, Bennett set about to raise funds for the mural’s rejuvenation by calling on the local community. She placed calls to 40 citizens asking them each for $100 and they all surprised her with their willingness to give, she said.

“Everyone I have talked to said, ‘absolutely count me in,’” she said.

“Longtime business people and residents of Hot Springs, who are not connected to the film institute but want to save the mural, wanted to contribute,” she said.

Herr-Chambliss said Hot Springs has distinguished itself, as many cities have, with the art of mural paintings.

“Each frame is from a documentary we had screened. Now, after many years, so many local companies are coming forward with donated services, even in this economy, to help us renovate and stabilize a great piece of Hot Springs art available for everyone to see 24 hours a day.”

Even tourists who walked by this week and noticed the activity around the mural wanted to photograph it and were concerned the plan might be to paint over the existing images.

The only change to the mural Payne is considering is a brighter background, he said.

Cleaning the wall was planned for Thursday but the progress did not go as quickly as hoped while most of the day was used to gather supplies, find electrical outlets, line up tools and “the small things that are so important,” Bennett said.

Payne was on site Thursday assessing the damage to the wall.

“Look at that long crack. That will have to be fixed,” he said to onlookers.

Cleaning the wall is the first order of business, he said, anxious to get up on the lift and “get the goggles on.”

He will strip down parts of the damaged image before he begins the painstaking approach of “restoring it like an old master’s painting,” he said.

“Plugging” areas that have leached away and applying a coating of epoxy resin will improve the adhesion of paint.

Then Payne will “inpaint,” or paint back, the missing areas to get it as close as possible to the original.

Dan Anderson, a technical coordinator with the HSDFI will assist Payne with filming to document the process.

Ben Meade, HSDFI board chairman, said the grassroots support of the project has encouraged the board members.

“The local community has come together,” he said. “All the paint and supplies were donated by Sherwin-Williams and Hays Rental supplied the lift.

“To have a community come together like this is great. No one we have asked to contribute has said ‘no.’ All contributions, even the smallest, have ‘added up.’ A plaque will be engraved with all the contributors’ names and displayed,” he said.

Years ago, while Payne lived in Hot Springs, his creative ideas took shape in a number of whimsical pieces that popped up all over the city. He also mentored budding artists and enlisted their help to complete the artworks.

He placed a large-scale mosaic dragonfly in 2004 on the Convention Boulevard wall using elements of pieces crafted by students from Hot Springs Middle School and Gardner Math, Science, Technology Magnet School.

In a similar fanciful fashion, Payne created a 66-inch-square pyramid butterfly sculpture to raise awareness of the plight of the monarch butterfly. It still stands at the corner of Olive and Oak Streets beside the Clinton Cultural Campus. Students from Gardner Magnet school also made the ceramic tiles that make up that piece. Payne also helped the students with other larger-than-life projects at the school, creating a grid system to help the young artists enlarge their original drawings in the same manner that he used a grid system at the HSDFI mural project.

Payne said while he is in town he wants to visit the sites of his projects to see the surfaces’ condition and the maintenance they may require.

Call 321-4747 for information.

The Fun City Barbershop Chorus will host Barbershop Fun Fest and present a show at 5:30 p.m. Saturday at the Malco Theatre, 817 Central Ave.

Admission is free but donations will be accepted to further the support of high school singing programs.

Local entertainer Tom Wilkins will be the master of ceremonies.

The Fun Fest will be composed of barbershop singers from Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Tennessee.

They will meet at First Baptist Church on Saturday morning and rehearse with Joe Liles during the day, getting songs ready for the presentation that evening. Liles is the past president and executive vice president for the Barbershop Society. He is a published arranger and author and was a member of a gold medal winning senior quartet. Liles is well known and respected in the barbershop realm.

Liles will lead the mass chorus in several songs, including “Mam’selle,” “Drivin’ Me Crazy” and “Spiritual Medley.”

“Mam’selle” was a late ’40s hit for five different performers, including Frank Sinatra and Dick Haynes. The barbershop arrangement is by Tom Sando and has been labeled as “an amazing version” of the song.

“Drivin’ Me Crazy” was written by Bob “Diz” Disney in 1989, and has been performed by international winning quartets.

Singing it requires smooth singing and fine attention to the rhythmic patterns.

The “Spiritual Medley” was adapted to a barbershop arrangement by the Imperials, a gospel quartet founded in 1964, with solid four-part harmony, popular with barbershop singers and audiences alike, performed at a brisk tempo.

In addition to the mass chorus, the Fun City Chorus will perform along with the Diamond States Chorus and several quartets.

The Fun City Chorus meets Mondays in the Fellowship Hall of Westminster Presbyterian Church, 3819 Central Ave. Male singers of all ages are welcome. Call 501-627-4545 for information.

Malinda Herr-Chambliss, executive director, Hot Springs Documentary Film Institute, on Friday welcomed students from Park International Baccalaureate School to the historic Malco Theater. More than 135 area students and teachers took part in the institute’s “What’s Up Doc?” children’s education outreach program, viewing “Learning With Our Fun Brain.” The program was held in collaboration with WOW Village for Big and Little Kids and Dr. Shamshad Haroon, M.D.

The Arkansas Underground Film Festival, a three-day event focusing on celebrating cutting-edge, underground film and video art, is scheduled July 17-19.

Organizers want to promote original work made on the fringes of the art world and media makers who create work outside of the cultural norm are encouraged to take part, according to the Web site.

The international festival coordinators welcome media makers from anywhere in the world to submit work and attend the event as well as live visual performances of any kind.

The festival is mainly geared toward short films under 20 minutes, but work of all lengths will be considered.

Experimental, surreal or documentary work with an edge or unusual bent is encouraged along with gritty, low-budget, found or cult work that will remain uncensored.

Acceptable screening formats will include digital video, regular 8mm, super 8mm, or 16mm, with 35mm not an available format at this time. Other formats may be acceptable, if the artist provides the screening equipment.

ARKUFF is a collaboration between the Hot Springs Documentary Film Institute and Low Key Arts.

The organizers include Dan Anderson, program director; Ben Meade, chief advisor; and Bill Solleder and Shea Childs, marketing.

Call 321-4747 for information.

AT THE MALCO THEATRE in DOWNTOWN HOT SPRINGS, ARKANSAS
SATURDAY JUNE, 20TH
OPENING RECEPTION AT 7:30pm
SCREENING AT 8pm
$5 ADMISSION - all proceeds to the upcoming VOV in March 2010
brought to you by the VOV / HSDFI / ARKUFF