by Patti Connor
Staff Writer
With a sea of new faces in place for the upcoming season, changes are in the works for the Jacksonville Jaguars mural on the west side of the Ed Ball Building.
“We realize that some of the players have moved on. Even though nothing appears to be physically going on, we’ll soon begin the process of painting new numbers,” said Dan Connell, senior vice president of marketing for the team.
According to Connell, any alternations will involve numbers only; no changes will be made to the actual mural.
“We haven’t selected a contractor yet, so we don’t know exactly how long it will take. Hopefully, it won’t be too long,” he said.
That’s in marked contrast with the painting of the original mural, which required 350 gallons of paint and took seven weeks to complete. The mural, which measures 100-by-215 feet, was painted and designed for the 12-story building by Anne Banas, a painter who teaches art at FCCJ’s Kent Campus.
“In 1993 when Jacksonville first got the football team, a big parade was planned along Bay Street and the City wanted someone to paint a mural in time for the celebration. Gillian Baker of the Cultural Arts Council contacted me because she knew I was experienced in painting large murals,” said Banas.
She was all set to begin when the parade was canceled and the project shelved. It was resurrected two and a half years later by First Union. The Ed Ball Building had a huge expanse of wall that many believed was virtually begging for a mural.
Specifically, the bank wanted something similar to the mural of the Carolina Panthers featured on the wall of the First Union building in Charlotte. Banas began the design end of the project in January 1998. That spring, Jaguars owner Wayne Weaver determined he wanted a handful of the players depicted with Coach Tom Coughlin, including Mike Hollis, Jimmy Smith, Keenan McCardell, Joel Smeenge, and Renaldo Wynn. At 90 feet tall, “the players’ feet are bigger than the cars,” said Banas, who along with 30 of her students had already painted a mural for Sally Industries. Work began that summer.
“That was the year that Jacksonville was burning [in 1998 during the state wildfires]. The smell of smoke was everywhere. I actually canceled work for two days because we couldn’t even see the wall,” she said.
Combating the smoke was not the only problem they faced. Heights were another.
“I’m terrified of heights and one of the other people had issues with it, too,” she said. “You learn to do certain things. For one, you don’t look down. Instead, you build up higher and higher You also walk carefully and think about what you’re doing.”
Banas was adamant that a host of other safety precautions be taken.
“Along with insisting that everyone wear hard hats, I also insisted that First Union use a certain type of scaffolding that even OSHA doesn’t require,” said Banas, who spent about a third of her time on the roof of the old Southern Bell building nearby with binoculars and a cell phone, making suggestions about changing this color or that.
“It was quite a summer,” she said.