Going Nuts: Local artists bring visions to life for community art project

Things are about to get squirrely in the city of Seguin. That’s because a handful of larger-than-life squirrels are being transformed into individually designed, colorful works of art.

Feeding into that ‘squirrelyness’ are the creative juices of a handful of local artists who, for the last several weeks, have been working tirelessly behind the scenes preparing these fiberglass squirrels for public display around the city. The squirrels are all part of the Seguin Commission on the Arts Squirrel Trail Program – a program similar to public art projects used in some other cities. Examples include the horses in Amarillo or closer to home, the Mermaids in San Marcos.

Excited to have been commissioned for one of the eight squirrels being prepped for display is Area Artist Amber Prince. Prince is a couple of weeks away from finishing up her squirrel purchased by Schertz Bank & Trust.

When the bank manager and father, Lee Prince, told her about the project, the artist said she didn’t hesitate to submit her concept drawing for consideration. She says even after almost a year of being selected, she remains humbled in having the chance to work on this particular project.

“Hearing about it from my father, I, of course, grew up always painting and drawing and sculpting as a little kid. I wish I could make a living of doing that, but I don’t. In fact, right now, I am a CAD drafter, but my father brought up that the bank was going to be doing this and I could put in my concept drawings if I had any and I wanted to purse it and see if I could be selected among anyone else who tried to compete for the position. I don’t know who all else competed, but I know I’ve been familiar with the bank branch and their logo and their colors for years and so it was pretty easy to come up with the initial concept for the squirrel,” Prince said. 

Growing up, Prince says she was always fascinated and mesmerized with these kinds of projects around the state.

“They allowed me as an artist to submit whatever and I’ve never done anything like this before. Growing up, I lived near Houston, and I would see the Pelicans of Seabrook and I knew that this was kind of a similar thing just with a local critter of the area, the squirrel as opposed to the pelican and I always thought it was so neat and wanted to see them up close and now, it’s my chance to do that. As far as the chance for me to submit the concept, I took what I knew were the bank’s colors which luckily they worked together quite nicely, blue and white and their mascot was an eagle so I tried to integrate kind of the spirit of that pride bold where a bold eagle is white haired and brown body – well I just used the bank colors of a white hair and kind of a blue body and sort of playing and painting with that while still keeping that it is a squirrel and not a bird,” Prince said.

Prince who lives in the Hill Country, says much of her weekend is spent on the project. She travels into neighboring New Braunfels, where the squirrel is being housed. She says like most public art, the squirrel project has had its challenges, but, in the end, they are nothing that a little creativity can’t solve.

“I am coming and painting on it every weekend. So far, I’ve gotten the primer on there and the base colors and now I’m starting to fill in the details on the squirrel. Art is a nebulous thing so you can have your initial things and at the time when I was drawing the squirrels, I didn’t know what the final sculpture itself was going to look like – how cartoonish it would be or how realistic it was going to be. A lot of people don’t realize it but if you look at a squirrel’s hands, they look like little dragon claws, They are quite aggressive looking and so you don’t know what kind of tone the sculpture itself is going to take until after you submitted your concept. So I knew that there would be room to play around and experiment and sure enough, as I was painting on this thing versus drawing out my ideas on my tablet – I’m playing with the materials and the textures and it’s going to stay in spirit of what the initial concept drawings are but there will of course, be differences because you have to have flexibility and work with what you find yourself presented with,” Prince said.

The creativity of it all has Prince on Cloud 9, especially when her vision challenges her artistic ability to pair two animals together.

“The creative juices take over. It is instinctual. You just kind of know where to go and occasionally you make a misstep but luckily the medium, I’m working with is a pretty forgiving one and so if I end up not liking something, I’ve done it in such a way where it is easy to go back. At this point of time, I am working on the texture – when the viewer looks at it, I don’t want them to be able to decide fully whether it’s feathers or kind of clumpy fur because like I said I’m trying to do that kind of hybrid between squirrel and the bank’s representative of an eagle so I am sort of playing with the textures for that but I think I’m leaning more heavily towards feathers which I kind of like,” Prince said.

Overcoming some of those hurdles and appreciating the experience is always easier, especially when you can talk directly to your subject.

“I do talk to the squirrel. We have many in-depth conversations. I’m spending a lot of time with her. I needed to decide a name early on and it was like when you get a new car, you need to get to know them first before you can really give them a name. I think the official on paper name is Saver because it’s a bank – you are saving your money, squirreling away,” Prince said. 

Prince says finding the right process to tackle the squirrel was a priority from the beginning. She says plenty of homework and research went into ensuring the preservation of her artwork.

“For the medium itself, I’ve never done this before and a lot of people say they use acrylics and I’m thinking this thing is going to be out in the elements and out in the open and exposed to a bunch of UV light and I’m like well I know that paint can sometimes interact with each other interestingly and the city had a particular clear coat or at least I was provided with a gallon of clear coat and so I made sure that the paints that I got were compatible with that because they are chemicals, they can interact weird if not. So, I decided to go with automotive paint because that’s what I think will be the most durable and UV resistant and last the most over the years,” said Prince. “I even went so far as to contact – I got in touch with a sign maker who had worked in sign making for a long time and I asked him if you want a sign to last the longest time and it’s going to be out in the elements, what do you use and he even confirmed what I was already thinking, ‘yeah, we use automotive paint.”

Prince says the overall vision for the project is “to keep it simple and just go with the flow.” She says any good artist knows that you never want to force an idea onto the canvas, or in this case, onto any squirrel.

“So far I’m pretty much just channeling my inner kid because I always kind of drew critters anyway as a little one and I’m just sort of having fun with it,” Prince said.

The behind the scenes work of these artists perhaps makes each of these future squirrels in Seguin more intriguing.

That’s definitely been the case for Nancy Hartfiel, another artist who has been commissioned to paint one of Seguin’s other squirrels. Hartfiel’s squirrel was purchased by a congregation member at Spirit of Joy Lutheran Church. Once completed, the squirrel will be dedicated outside the church located alongside the city’s Walnut Springs Hike and Bike Trail.

Now, unlike Prince, Hartfiel wasn’t necessarily looking to take on a squirrel.

“Kathy Yandell heard about the squirrel trail project, and she filled out the paperwork and she paid for the squirrel and at church, she said I bought the squirrel, will you paint it? Or I want you to paint it. And if you know Kathy, you don’t say no to Kathy. So, I said, ‘sure, I’ll paint it,” Hartfiel said.

Humbled by the request, Hartfiel says the reality of it all didn’t sink in until the solid white and huge squirrel made its debut.

“I felt honored, but it really didn’t hit me until I went and picked up the squirrel and saw it and went ‘oh, my God! What have I gotten myself into?’ And I thought oh, this is not going to be easy, but it was interesting. It was fun. I thought, we will try it and see what happens,” Hartfiel said. 

As for the vision of the squirrel, Hartfiel says it felt like a no brainer and is proud of how it resulted in a story of heritage for the church building which once served as the former Seguin ISD Juan Seguin campus.

“Kathy gave me complete freedom. She said do what you want and my vision was you know Juan Seguin was the Mexican school and the community is of Mexican descent pretty much and the 40th anniversary of the Teatro De Artes and so I was thinking Mexican and I looked online and I looked at the fabric and the art and I came up with the different flowers from the different areas in Mexico – the real simple flowers and then, I looked at the costumes of the dancers – the really bright beautiful colors of the women’s dresses and the black and white of the men’s’ outfits so I ended up doing flowers all over it – the bright colored flowers with a black background,” Hartfiel said.

Now, although Hartfiel hails herself as everything but a painter, one could automatically think that there were challenges along the way. And while there may have been some, Hartfiel, who for years served as an art teacher in the Navarro ISD, believes her inner desire to teach herself something new was the ultimate rescue in getting this particular job done.

“If you look at the squirrel, you see it’s holding a pecan. You have to get in behind the pecan so there are tights spots. It’s not a flat object. It’s 3-dimensional so you are having to work around it and it’s acrylic paint. It’s not opaque so it needed lots of layers and I’m not really a painter so maybe for somebody else it would be easier to do but it was a challenge, but it was fun. It was a fun thing to do,” Hartfiel said.

Like Saver, Hartfiel says her squirrel too has also been given a name.

“Kathy named her Joy. I talked to her quite a bit and sometimes it was good and sometimes, it wasn’t and then I had people come and go. Friends would come and somebody asked if I could some place and I said I couldn’t go. I was being held hostage by a four-foot squirrel. I said the only place I’m going to was to church and to appointments,” Hartfiel laughs.

The fun of painting Joy has even reportedly rolled out onto the front lawn. Hartfiel says if her neighbors took notice, then she can’t wait when the rest of the community gets to enjoy all of the other finished squirrels throughout the community.

“I’m excited. I tell you one thing, Arlynn (husband) took it outside for me so we could look at it in the sunlight and it was like having a Noah’s Ark. All the neighbors came out and they said ‘what’s that? What do you have in your yard?’ Hartfiel said.

The city looks to roll out the squirrels one at a time. The hope is to have at least one of them in place by the end of this year. Sponsorships for the squirrels are still available. The plan calls for selling anywhere between five to 10 squirrels every year for the next few years. The impact that the squirrels will have in the Seguin community and the “joy” they are destined to bring are what Hartfiel believes are the most exciting part of this journey of working behind the scenes and preparing Seguin for its Squirrel Trail Program.

“We’ve lived in Seguin for over 40 years and Seguin is really a very special place to us. You know my husband had a practice here and we’ve raised our kids here. They went to school here so I would like for people to look at Joy and really be happy. I’d like them to look at Joy kind of like they look at Seguin. When they go, I want them to look at it, enjoy it and be happy around her but I’d like them to take a little more time and look a little closer at her and maybe they’ll find something that they weren’t expecting. And I’ll leave it at that,” Hartfiel said.