Matthew Burnette, Staff Writer

Work has begun on a facelift for the Manchester Coffee County Public Library by way of a set of murals painted on the building’s exterior by Franklin based company Murals and More.

The project, which is entirely funded by the library’s committed funds budget item that was built up after years of donations, stemmed from an idea that Library Director Pauline Vaughn had after seeing all of the other murals on various buildings in Manchester.

“I just thought it would be really nice if we had a mural, maybe just on one corner, and then we were like ‘Well we don’t want to leave that one off,’ and then the muralist that we hired made sketches of all of what’s going on right now,” she explained. “The (Library) Board was very receptive to that because we have such a canvas to work with.”

Efforts have been made recently to beautify the library’s exterior such as installing a new sign in front of the building on Hillsboro Blvd. and cleaning up a garden behind it. Vaughn said she would also like to at some point install a playground.

Vaughn originally proposed the mural idea to the County Capital Outlay Committee to get the project approved. The Library Board then sought out muralists to submit bids for the work. They ultimately settled on Mike Cooper and his company Murals and More.

“He was the most detailed and the most professional looking work that we saw of the three,” she recalled. “While he was a little more expensive than the other ones, he really was the one who, with his mock-ups and things like that and showing them to the Board, he really won us over with all of that.”

The library board then met with Cooper to offer input into what they were looking for in the murals.

Vaughn says they had the idea for a shark painted around the exterior book deposit, so it looks like the books were being dropped in its mouth, something similar to the famous “angel wings” in Nashville that would be destination people would want to go to and take pictures.

They also wanted to incorporate various book genres into the murals as well as fairy tale and historical elements. The front will feature a library scene and one of the side walls will have a story time theme.

The Board then returned with the mockups that Cooper and his team created to Capital Outlay.

“They were really excited about it too,” she explained. “We got all that approved which gave him the chance to schedule the start date.”

The project so far, by Vaughn’s estimation, is going well and even better than expected.

“I had in my mind a vision of it, and it’s beyond what I thought,” she said. “It was a collaboration between the Board members and Mr. Cooper from Murals and More and the staff. We all just kind of put our ideas together, and he made it one cohesive form of art.”

Cooper, who has a degree in Fine Art, has owned and operated Murals and More for 35 years with his wife Mickie who handles all of the business aspects of the company while Mike handles the creative.

“I’ve been painting on walls my entire life. Never canvas work, never gallery work, just walls,” he said. “It was one of those things where one day I was looking to do something different, and my wife said, “Well why don’t you paint murals for a living? You’re pretty good at that.’ She’s in charge of the business aspect of it as far as the finances and taxes etc.”

“She’s also in charge of the whip,” he jokingly added. “I’m in charge of the artwork, and it seems to have worked out well now.”

He explained that the beginning stages of a project like the one at the library are very collaborative as he tries to bring customer’s visions to life.

“We just kind of pick their brains, and then we take all of that information back to the studio and we will start coming up with drawings and different ideas,” explained Cooper. “We might come up with three or four or five different ideas and bring that back to them and present them to them, and they’ll say yes, no, ‘That one’s great,’ ‘That one sucks,’ and then we’ll revise them and keep going back and forth until we end up with scale drawings of exactly what these things are going to look like. It’s all based on their input, budget and time frame.”

The collaboration doesn’t stop with the customer, though. Once he gets a general idea of what they want, he brings that outline back to his team and the work together to put the ideas to paper.

“We’ve got large tables down there, and we’ll sit down, and everybody will come up with different things,” he said. “There is a such thing as horrible ideas, but what you can do is someone can come up with something that’s really stupid, but it leads you into a different direction that you didn’t think you’d go before, and you can come up with something really fun. That’s the best part, coming up with the ideas.”

Cooper and his team have done a lot of work beautifying the sides of historic buildings and adding character to the outsides of businesses. He says the murals become a destination give those who work in the buildings and businesses a sense of pride and ownership.

“The library is pretty popular anyway, and while we’re there, there’s people in there all day long back and forth, but just for the murals themselves, there’ll be people coming by just to look at that,” he explained. “It’ll be on people’s to-do list to come and see. The library especially will have a huge sense of pride in the artwork, but they’ll also see a whole lot more traffic.”

According to Vaughn, a lot of the traffic has already started as members of the community stop to check out the murals being painted.

Crystal McKee, a visual artist with Murals and More who is working on the library project, says the feedback from kids especially has been great.

“It’s been incredible, just the raw reactions of the kids,” she said with a smile. “I had one kid that was so excited to tell everybody I painted an eagle on the mural, even though it’s an owl. That has been the best part.”

She noted that the community in general has been very supportive and enthusiastic to see the project come to life.

“This has been the most fun mural we’ve done.”