Bennis, Adee mural help brighten up Bruce

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BRUCE – Brookings artist Chuck Bennis has been livening up the blank slates of South Dakota’s buildings with his murals for six years. 

Last month, Bennis completed his largest mural yet in Bruce, just in time for Honey Days. 

“It’s a huge wall. It’s the biggest wall I’ve ever painted,” Bennis said. “It’s definitely a presence in downtown Bruce, and as soon as I started painting the wall yellow first, the entire town was like, ‘What’s going on?!’ They were all coming around and asking what I was up to, and so that was really fun having people stopping by and chatting and taking pictures.”

The Adee family commissioned the mural from Bennis as a gift for Richard and Alice Adee, to commemorate Adee Honey’s 65th anniversary. Bennis is familiar with the Adee family, and “they were aware of my work …. They had that wall all picked out, and they invited me up there, and we discussed the history of Adee Honey Farms,” he said. The family picked out a few items to feature in the mural and gave the artist some source material to work off of. Dripping honey, bees, bee boxes, portraits of Richard and Alice, their first office building, and a family truck. With that, Bennis began illustrating.

“…I (digitally) illustrate all of my components,” Bennis said of his process. “So I did a cartoon portrait of the grandparents, and an illustration of the truck. I did all those separate and then I kind of put them all together for the composition. I take a photo of the actual wall and then, digitally, place those things on the wall so they can see exactly what it’s going to look like.” 

Bennis doesn’t only paint murals. In fact, his process for painting goes back to his process for printmaking. 

“If you think of screen printing, you have several layers. And that exactly is the process for my murals, too.” Bennis starts with a layer of sprayed exterior latex paint followed by a layer of paint in the shade of the mural’s background. 

“I’ll spray that base, and then the line work is spray painted over the top of that. So, the mural’s three or four layers of paint or color and lines. Building it up, and then violà!”

There were a few challenges Bennis faced in the process of the painting, such as the size of the mural. 

“I had to get a boom lift to do it …. I’ve only gone as high as my ladder can go, which I think the highest I’ve done is like 16 feet where I was at the top of my 12-foot ladder and then I had an extension on my sprayer and got up that far,” he said. 

Along with the size, the Adee building is made of Sioux quartzite, creating a rough, textured surface. 

“Some of the parts I was either going to roll on or brush on. And it was impossible to do either … The only way I could apply paint was through spray. And when I was trying to do some of the straight lines … the surface was so curved, convex and concaved, a straight line turns out to be a wavy line. But it all turned out great!”

What Bennis loves most about creating murals like the one in Bruce is “bringing creativity and vibrance to a space that didn’t have it before. So, in this case, here’s this building – I think it’s probably a late 1800s building, a … blank, white wall. And it almost disappears. You walk by it or drive by it so much that you just don’t see things anymore, and that art completely transforms the space and it brings color. People have a sense of, ‘Hey, something’s going on here.’ Here’s this little town of Bruce, here’s creativity, you’ve got history ….” 

Bennis hopes those passing through Bruce will ask themselves who Richard Adee is and look up the history of the small town.

Bennis also loves the human connection that murals provide.

“When it was a blank wall, no one would stop and take a picture. But all of a sudden now, you’ve got people stopping, having a conversation ….” 

He also hopes the mural draws people to Bruce and creates economic activity in town. 

“I’ve had a lot of people comment and mention that they’ve driven up there and went to check it out, so hopefully some economic activity from people going up and then hopefully they stop and get something from the gas station and the bar and grill.” 

“It was a fantastic piece, and I’m real grateful for the Adee family that commissioned it,” said Bennis in closing. “It was a really neat backdrop for their Honey Days …. And like I said, just adding artwork to the town is such a cool thing. I really am grateful for all that. It was a pleasure to learn… about the history of the little town of Bruce north of us. 

Contact Alison Simon at asimon@brookingsregister.com.