“First and foremost, I’m always looking to add a lot of color. Boring gray walls kind of annoy me, so I’m always looking to add as much color as I can,” he said. “And then speaking to the theme that they’re looking for, I’m kind of going with this (idea of) seeing things from other people’s perspective. There’s a lot of faces on the wall, and the eyes of those faces are connected with each other.”

“Perspective” is the latest in a slew of murals being completed around town over the last several months, and the money for this project came exclusively from the Community Foundation of Marshall County’s Rebuild Marshalltown Fund. Marshall County Arts and Culture Alliance Executive Director Amber Danielson called it one of her favorite pieces yet and commended the artist for his unwavering determination to finish it within a tight timeframe.

After flying into Des Moines on Tuesday and driving to Marshalltown in a rental car, Tetlak almost immediately went to work and has been at it around the clock since — Danielson called him “one of the fastest workers” she’s ever partnered with at the Alliance. A pair of Marshalltown Community College students also offered their assistance in preparing the wall and making it into a plain, uniform canvas he could paint over quickly.

Tetlak said he follows several websites that provide opportunities to create public art and sculptures, and when he noticed the call to artists here in Marshalltown, he quickly applied.

Jason Tetlak, an artist from Jacksonville, Fla., was hard at work on the “Perspective” mural at the Orpheum Theater Wednesday evening.

“I’m always looking to go new places. That’s kind of half the reason why I do this is so I can visit places I wouldn’t normally go,” he said.

Although he’s only lived in two places in his life — the Cleveland, Ohio, area where he grew up and his current home in Jacksonville — painting murals has taken Tetlak across the country, and he always attempts to present his own artistic vision while also working within the confines of what the entity paying him wants to see from a project.

“We always do objectives, and we really try to make the objectives as high level and as vague as possible. So we can point in directions, but we really want the artist’s creativity to come through,” Danielson said.

In this case, the three objectives were relatively simple: symbolize and celebrate the rebirth, resiliency and future growth of a diverse community; inspire and represent belonging, inclusivity, embracement and unity; and provide a “wow” factor for the north entrance of the community and the east entrance to the historic downtown district.

According to Danielson, the Orpheum was always one of the Alliance’s top “wishlist” spots for a potential mural when the program started in 2018, and once the funding fell into place, it was a no-brainer as a welcoming entrance to an area that was being reborn after the devastation of the tornado and derecho. Tetlak was one of 19 artists to apply, and the selection committee included representatives from the Orpheum, Marshalltown Community School District, MCC and the Alliance.

With the MCSD set to take over ownership of the Orpheum sometime in the near future, Danielson said the district’s diversity and goal to make the theater something of a welcome center aligned perfectly with Tetlak’s proposal.

While it’s impossible to please everyone with every mural project — Tetlak joked that one woman stopped him to inform him he was “ruining” the blank wall of the building — he hopes his contribution to Marshalltown will be remembered long after his departure.

“When you put a piece of public art like this on a building, it really grabs people’s attention. You can’t drive by here and not see this,” he said. “But there are probably six signs within eyesight of here that people don’t even notice.”

Tetlak also hosted an artist talk in the Orpheum parking lot on Saturday from 11 a.m. to noon.

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Contact Robert Maharry

at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or

rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.