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The La Crosse, Wis., artist spent about 150 hours this month painting a garden-themed wall painting on a 135 feet of wall in the mattress section of the new Slumberland Furniture store, at 1435 Service Drive, scheduled to open today.
After a couple 18-hour days of painting, Mattison-Prise thought it was best not to do the 30-minute drive home in the early morning fog.
“I didn’t think it was weird when I was doing it, but now, I think it’s pretty crazy,” she said. “Nobody else in the world will ever spend the night there again.”
The 50-year-old owner of the JMP Art Gallery & Studio in La Crosse has done many murals over her 25-year career, including a similar garden mural at the Onalaska, Wis., Slumberland, several murals for ORC Industries’ La Crosse plant and a Lambeau Field mural in a La Crosse man’s basement.
Mattison-Prise often sleeps at on-site apartments and nearby hotels for out-of-town jobs, but she admitted staying overnight in a furniture store — of all places — is pretty cool.
“I didn’t know how they’d feel about me staying there for naps, but they kind of encouraged me,” she said.
The manager brought blankets. And Mattise-Prise learned the beauty of pillow-top mattresses after many hours painting in uncomfortable positions.
Not like she slept long. Mattison-Prise said she can’t sleep well in mid-project and prefers to work around-the-clock to be more efficient and capitalize on inspiration.
The power naps helped Mattise-Prise finish a brightly-colored rock garden scene filled with ivy, sunflowers, lilies, daisies and geraniums over three walls mostly using a half-inch flat brush in about 15 days.
The new Slumberland store next to Culver’s more than doubled in size, allowing for more modern big-city layout with individual settings to give customers ideas on how to use the furniture in their home, said co-owner Mark Chafoulias.
Mattison-Prise’s garden mural helps polish the look, he said.
“She had to squeeze (getting the mural done) in a shorter amount of time,” Chafoulias said. “She stayed overnight at least three times to get it done, plus she got to try out a premium bed.”
Contact reporter Amber Dulek at amber.dulek@lee.net or (507) 453-3513.
The Ultimate Hustler wrote on Jan 19, 2008 3:21 PM: