Ribbon-cutting for new mural in Eldon

ELDON — The side of Eldon’s City Hall has a new mural depicting historical sites in the town. It was painted by a woman from the town.

Katlynne Hummell Underhill painted the mural 20 feet tall by 30 feet wide, which reads “Welcome to Eldon — Home of the American Gothic House.” For each letter in “Eldon,” Underhill painted an image inside it showing a famous place from the town: the American Gothic House, the Carnegie Library, the McHaffey Opera House, the Rock Island Trail Depot, and perhaps the two most widely known Eldon “residents” in history — the farmer and his daughter depicted in Grant Wood’s painting “American Gothic.”

A ribbon-cutting ceremony for the mural was held Saturday morning during the American Gothic Days festivities, where the artist answered questions from the public about how the artwork came to be. Underhill said she lived in Fairfield until she was 7, and then spent the rest of her childhood in Eldon. She attended the University of Iowa to study painting and drawing and today resides in Coralville.

Patti Durflinger, a member of Eldon Uptown/Downtown and the American Gothic House Board, was reading a magazine article about University of Iowa students who were painting murals across the state, and noticed one of the students was from Eldon.

“I thought, ‘We have to reach out to her,’” Durflinger said.

When Durflinger reached out to Underhill in 2019, Underhill had just graduated from college. Eldon already had a few murals in town, including a giant sunflower on the side of the bait shop, but Durflinger told Underhill the town wanted another.

Durflinger said Eldon is a tourist hot spot thanks to the American Gothic House, and welcomes about 18,000 visitors each year. The town has a number of other historic sites, too, and she thought it would be nice to display them somehow in a public piece of art. The side of City Hall had nothing on it, so that was chosen as the location of the mural. A committee consisting of Durflinger, Brian Keasling and Donna Jeffrey was formed to seek funding for the art project.

Underhill was the perfect person for the job because not only is she from Eldon, but she specializes in public artwork. The mural in Eldon is her third mural, and her largest. She painted a similar postcard-style mural on the side of a silo for the town of Lowden, Iowa, and painted a mural at the Coralville New Pioneer Coop.

“A lot of communities don’t have access to an art gallery, so public art is a good way to bridge that gap,” Underhill said.

Initially, Eldon Uptown/Downtown wanted the mural to be a landscape in the style of Grant Wood, but after seeing what Underhill did with Lowden’s mural, they asked her to duplicate that style of pictures inside each letter of the town’s name. Durflinger sent her pictures of buildings she could include in the letters.

Underhill said she was most nervous about painting the letter “N” because that contains the iconic father and daughter from Grant Wood’s “American Gothic.” She knew that image would be scrutinized the most, so she practiced it four times before settling on a design she liked.

Freehand is Underhill’s favorite method of painting, but she created this mural in Photoshop first, then projected her design onto a series of 12 aluminum panels, each 5 feet by 6 feet.

Durflinger said the Uptown/Downtown committee raised $9,000 from various organizations to fund the project, including donations from Libertyville Savings Bank, the Grant Wood Art Colony at the University of Iowa and Humanities Iowa.