Community Spotlight

• As you travel across our great country, whether you are in a large city or a small town, you will often come across murals painted by local or commissioned artists to reflect the history of the area. Blain can now be added to that ever-growing list of towns that commemorate their great history with painted artwork on the side of a building as the Blain Market gets a new facade!
• Since Wednesday, September 30, Janeen Hershey, from York, has been busy with a brush and paint creating a historical mural that features key buildings and history in our town. Seated in front of the train station are people done in a “sepia” tone which represents the early photographs that were not stark black and white but took on a warm, brown hue. Farther down the wall is the general store which also housed the bank at one time. At the bottom is an up-the-street view of Blain.

• As a young girl, Janeen loved painting and excelled in the liberal arts area of school, like art, music and theater. She told me that she tried out for high school plays but never got a part because the director knew her art capabilities and she was always chosen to help create the set.
  After high school and attending art school at the Antonelli Institute of Art and Photography, Janeen worked at print shops as a graphic designer. In her free time, people commissioned her to do family and pet portraits, eventually, her love of art led her to start doing her own paint parties in 2015. Janeen credits her deep faith in God to guiding her in this direction. She told me that she prayed that God would find her something better than working 9 to 5 weekdays; something that she could just do on the weekends…. The paint parties were the result! Now she does about 60 parties a year, and she just figured out that all the people that have attended her parties, have created a total of 12,000 paintings!
• Looking for a new challenge, she asked a neighbor if she could paint something on his fence because she wanted to do “Something large!” he told her to go ahead and she painted a whole fence of hydrangeas. And this pretty much sparked her interest in doing more murals. To date, she has done between 60 and 70 murals, a lot of them in Surfside Beach, South Carolina, where the weather is just beautiful for painting. Of the murals that she has painted in Pennsylvania, only two of them are outdoor murals, Blain is one of them and the others are all in private homes. And her work isn’t only limited to here in the States, she has commissioned pieces in Japan and London.
• While I was interviewing her, a lady came up and asked her how she got the whole image onto the wall. Thanks to high-tech, Janeen uses a virtual reality headset which has the artwork stored on it. All she needs to do is stand on the scissorlift and an outline appears for her to chalk in as the beginning process. From there, she uses Rustoleum paint in various hues to bring out all the details. After the whole wall is finished, she will go back with a clear coat to protect it from the elements.

• Janeen told me she has been fascinated with the number of people who stopped by and just chat with her. Many people have made daily visits to the store to watch the progress of Janeen’s talent. One Mennonite lady even stopped by because somebody told her there was a woman up on a scaffolding painting and she had to just stop by and see if that was true! If you are traveling through Blain, you are going to want to stop and see the mural. You might not see the lady on the scissorlift, but you will get a vivid picture of this beautiful town.

• If you want to know more about Janeen, maybe commission her to do some artwork, book a paint party or just check out her talent, you can view her website at paintaway.biz