Twice overnight in the past week, a happy and welcoming 15-foot artist-painted duck appeared on commercial buildings in Waynesboro.
Similar art of ducks have popped up in Waynesboro, Charlottesville and New York City, but were modestly-sized stencil pieces only around one-and-a-half feet tall. The Therapy Ducks are the works of artist Terry Ward who is also artistic director of the non-profit Virginia Street Art Festival.
The new giant ducks are painted freehand with a brush in approximately five hours.
“When I started on the first one around 9 p.m., there was a big, beautiful full- or nearly-full moon, bronze colored, just rising,” Ward said. “I finished around 2 a.m. when the moon was a pea-sized cool-white tiny dot higher up and about an arm’s length or two away from where it started in the night sky. The temperature was still over 80 degrees.”
Like all VSAF art, the mega-ducks are painted legally with permission of the owner of the wall. VSAF does not support illegal graffiti vandalism and even sometimes helps cover it up. The first mega-duck wall is on the rear garage-door-entry area of S.E. Auto Customs, a car-detailing enterprise known for window-tinting and for installing professional car stereo systems.
Forty-eight hours later, another giant duck arose behind Basic City Beer Company at the entry of The Foundry, after approval from BCBC’s boss/founder Bart Lanman.
VSAF is a non-profit organization that improves urban areas with legal outdoor art, including murals in Waynesboro such as the flower-haired woman at The Wayne Theatre parking area and the 7-story girl with tulips on the cold storage tower by Constitution Park. Founded in 2015, the giant tulip girl mural was ranked 2019’s World’s Top Mural by StreetArt360.
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Rebecca Barnabi
