WEEKENDER BLOG

A number of accomplished artists call the Cedar Valley home. This year the Cedar Falls and Waterloo Visitor Bureaus asked not one, but two of them to create our 2012 visitor guide cover.

The resulting image was a collaboration between painters Paco Rosic of Waterloo and Gary Kelley of Cedar Falls. Although they both share similar passions for their art, they can also be a study of contrasts. Paco, who painted the left half of our cover, works with aerosol cans of acrylic color. He has elevated this specialty of graffiti art to a new level and it’s on view nightly at his family’s restaurant, Galleria de Paco. The artist is a native of Sarajevo, Bosnia, and lived for a time in Germany before migrating to the United States as a boy.

By contrast, Gary Kelley is a native Iowan and an internationally recognized illustrator. He’s been a regular contributor to Rolling Stone, Playboy, Atlantic Monthly, and many other publications and he created the ubiquitous author murals seen in Barnes & Noble bookstores nationwide. In his downtown Cedar Falls studio, Gary conceived and sketched our cover image on a large canvas before handing it off to Paco, who then worked his aerosol magic on the left half of it.

Next, Paco returned the unfinished art to Gary, who completed the right side of it in his more traditional oil painting technique. The result was a unique challenge to these two skilled painters from different generations and different cultures. And if you ask either of them, despite these difference, two things they’ll always have in common are a passion for Picasso and a passion for their own personal art. For the 2013 Visitor Guide, these two artists created another image for the cover in the same collaboration as the first, pictured above.

The 2012 Visitors Guide cover artwork is accepting bids starting at $3,500.00 The 2013 Visitors Guide artwork is accepting bids starting at $3,000.00 Please email us with your name, mailing address, email address, phone number and bid amount at visit@cedarfallstourism.org. Bids may also be mailed to: Cedar Falls Tourism, 6510 Hudson Rd., Cedar Falls, IA. 50613. Bids will be accepted until February 28, 2013 for both of the original paintings. Additional information regarding the bidding process can be found at www.cedarfallstourism.org/lp/artwork or by calling 319-268-4266.

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