Two new murals to grace downtown McHenry, and residents can help paint one of them Saturday

Residents are invited to hop on down to the McHenry Brewing Company Saturday morning to add their brush strokes to the Fox River.

That is a version of the river that Jenny Mathews is creating as part of the mural she’s painting at the historic brewery in downtown McHenry. She’s leaving the river’s lily pads for residents to create.

[ See more photos of McHenry's two new murals ]

“I will have all of the colors of green for them to pick a lily pad and fill in,” Mathews, of Rockford, said. She suggests those who want to come to the event, set for 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. wear clothes they don’t mind getting paint on.

The mural is set for the wall at 3425 Pearl St. and is one of two going into downtown McHenry this summer.

On Thursday, Daniel Florek of Vindictive Vinyl installed a mural at 3411 W. Elm St. Designed to look like a postcard of McHenry, it was created by students from Matt Conner’s graphic design class at McHenry High School, printed by McHenry-based Jessup Manufacturing and installed by Florek.

The vinyl mural is in vertical panel strips that are each 46 inches wide. Once it is on the wall, Florek hopes it will look good for the next two years, minimum.

“This is kind of between two buildings, so it only gets a couple of hours of sunlight a day. That is low in comparison to most buildings,” he said. “It is not a lot of UV exposure at all.”

In layman’s terms, Florek said the vinyl mural is sort of like a massive sticker. He pulls off the backing as he attaches the photo to the wall.

“It will stick and stick well,” Florek said.

The community was invited to vote on which of four designs they liked best. The postcard-perfect designs were from Sophie Zieba, Lidia Urquizo, Bryan Panfil and Audrey Gerlach.

For the brewery’s mural, Mathews worked with McHenry Brewing owner Bob Master and city staff to come up with a design that the McHenry City Council also approved. As a book illustrator, Mathews often collaborates with others to match their vision with hers for how a book’s artwork will appear.

“I am always hearing someone else’s stories or ideas and making an image from what I heard,” she said. “It is usually pretty fun: I get to ask a lot of questions and hear everybody else’s ideas and decide what ideas will work together.”

She’s been a full-time artist, teaching classes at the Rockford Art Museum, illustrating books and painting murals for 12 years, Mathews said.

One thing that is new for her is using AI to determine how much paint to buy.

“I don’t care for AI when it makes art, but I fed into AI the image [planned for the mural]. AI told me how much paint to buy of each color. It took AI about 10 seconds,” Mathews said.

If it rains Saturday, plans are to move the community participation day to Sunday.