Muralist Given Unusual Canvas to Paint

If given the opportunity, Anthony Williams would paint murals for a living. It's what he loves best, the 61-year-old Manchester artist says.

But for now, he'll take what he can get, and what he's got is a pretty unique canvas to work on: the silo at the Homestead Restaurant and Tavern.

Last spring, the Homestead conducted a contest at Merrimack High School, inviting students to submit designs for artwork to be painted onto the white silo attached the historic farmhouse that was converted into a restaurant.

Homestead General Manager Nate Carney said the contest was opened to high school students and narrowed down to eight entries the restaurant then asked their customers to vote on over a three-month period. The winner, Cody Gladstone, not only gets to see his design on a larger-than-life scale, but received a $500 scholarship from the restaurant, Carney said.

Gladstone, a senior during the contest, is a first-year student at Vermont's Norwich Academy.

Once the design was selected, the restaurant started looking for a local artist to finish out this project that was created as a way to engage the community and create something to make the silo stand out, Carney said.

They were contacted by Williams, Carney said, who was interested and once they looked at Williams mural work that he's done in Manchester they were sold.

“He seemed like the right guy for the job,” Carney said. “We're happy with what we see.”

Williams, a commissioner with the Manchester Artists Association, said he found out about the project from an artist friend and knew as soon as he heard what the canvas was that he wanted the job.

Williams faced some challenges early on. With the rainy weather recently, Williams got a start on the silo and then was forced to put it on hold, returning to it for a day here and then stopping for a couple days there.

The weekend's sunny and warm weather gave him the opportunity to make the most progress over consecutive days yet, and Williams expects to be done with the project by Wednesday.

Williams said looking at the design, he was impressed. He saw a lot of talent in Gladstone and hopes to one day have the opportunity to meet him, even host him on his cable TV show in Manchester, Art Expressions.

“This project is a prize,” Williams said. “This is a real good design.”

Williams said the layout made working on a very tall, very round canvas very easy. It's well laid out and because of where the windows fall on the structure, he was perhaps inadvertently given a grid to paint on vertical lines to follow in the design from the top of the birch tree, straight down to the picket fence. He expected to spend upwards of 70 hours working to to paint and then glaze the mural with a coat that will protect it from the weather.

Williams, who is an interior and exterior house painter by trade, said he'd love nothing more than to retire and paint murals until he can't do so anymore.

“I'll never be a wealthy artist, but I like to be a happy one,” Williams said. “And work like this makes me happy. I felt like I had to have this project but I don't think I let [The Homestead management] know how happy I was to get it.”

Williams has been an artist in New Hampshire for many years, and has painted murals all over Manchester and one in Nashua at the Nashua Soup Kitchen and Shelter. In Manchester, he's worked with inner city youth through a program called Eagle Eyes, graffiti artists painting negative graffiti to change their mindset and do some murals together in approved spaces to show that they can do work for positive reasons. He painted and oversaw the development of several murals covering the walls in an area of town referred to as Cat Alley among many other projects.

Williams said he hopes for the silo mural to be his best one yet, and he hopes it may lead him down the road of more murals on similar canvases in the future.

“You may see this old guy hanging off the side of an old barn silo again in the future, you never know,” Williams said.