Artist Jeremy Jarvis works on his mural Thursday on the wall in the children’s story time room at the Loveland Public Library. Youth can help put the finishing touches on the mural Saturday during a painting workshop with Jarvis. (Jenny Sparks/Loveland Reporter-Herald)
From learning the Dewey Decimal System, to finding new music and movies, to just feeling at ease, artist Jeremy Jarvis has nothing but fond memories of visiting his local library as a child. So when the opportunity to bid on a mural project for the children’s story time room at the Loveland Public Library caught his attention, he didn’t hesitate to act.
“I had an opportunity to create something where kids can come into this awesome place called a library and see that they belonged here,” Jarvis said on Thursday morning as he put down the base layers of paint. “I immediately got this idea of ‘the joy in learning’. I just wanted to express that you could get so much out of that.”
Jarvis’ colorful design is a complement to the Mother Goose themed mural that has graced the story room’s wall for more than 20 years, but with an updated motif. Instead of fairy tale characters, the faces and images in the new artwork reflect the broad range of experience that patrons bring to the Loveland library, said children’s librarian Beth Gudmestad.
“We’re excited about the refresh,” she said. “Our whole goal when we went to the visual arts commission was that we wanted a more inclusive mural in our story time room, because we have so many families who come from different backgrounds.”
Jarvis beat out 119 others for the job, as judged by a panel of jurors from the city’s visual arts commission, library and parks staff and members of the library advisory board, including Gudmestad.
“Jeremy just nailed it,” she said. “I know his mural is going to reflect the families that we have in the Loveland community.”
For Jarvis, working around another mural wasn’t a challenge so much as it was a “problem to solve.”
“I didn’t want to just keep going with that subject matter,” he said, referring to the grassy scene, surrounded by trees and flowers. “So then I was left with colors.”
Jarvis continues the blue, pink and green hues that dominate the existing mural throughout his new design, which extends outside the room.
Other than that, the pieces have little in common visually, though both reflect a love of reading and the community created when stories and knowledge are shared.
“It’s not only about just finding something and learning and just keeping it all to yourself,” he said. “It’s about being excited about life and about what’s in the world, what there is to learn and to share that with someone else. I think that’s important. And that’s what a library is too.”
Jarvis has been hard at work on the mural since Monday, and expects to wrap up most of the preparation on Friday. For help with the finishing touches, Jarvis and the library are hosting a free youth painting workshop on Saturday that will give children ages 2 to 17 a chance to be a part of the creative process.
“It’s a lot of fun,” said Jarvis, who often holds public workshops during his projects. “You get people out of their homes, having conversations and creating murals.”
There will be eight 30-minute sessions during the day-long workshop, starting at 10 a.m. Participation is limited to 15 children and their adult chaperone.
For more information or to register, visit lovelandpubliclibrary.org/Events.
