Mataya Creations
Shanon and Mataya (a mother and daughter team) have been artists since the day they’ve been born. Both Shanon (mom) and Mataya (daughter) went to college for Fine Arts in their late teens and early twenties. Together they have huge interests in painting and drawing animals & landscapes.
As life unfolded beyond their education, Shanon worked her way up to being an interior designer, a small group teacher to crafts, painting courses and decorating.
Mataya pursues her passion running a photographey business and teaching painting courses with her mom for Albany’s community education courses.
While raising kids, both Shanon and Mataya enjoy spending their free time painting wall murals in homes.
For the bench project, we propose painting a few depictions from the two part series, Jude’s Giants, by Les Gram. Gram is a Minnesota farm boy raised in Belgrade.
On the open book page (the backrest portion), we will create a mural of the two iconic horses of the series, traveling in the fall weather with Jude, from a distance.
The bottom portion (where you sit) would be the foreground of the scene (as if you were crouching on the ground), of wheat and thistles, expressing the author’s love of fall. A quote will also be placed in this section:
“Thistle seeds travel with the air currents in the fall, and fall is my favorite time of year.”
The paper sides will be painted with horse shoes randomly placed with a realistic approach of the pages.
The back side will be the rear end of the horses, standing in their stalls at the Stearns county fair.
