Barn as art: Patriotic paintings go up in Huntsville
Jake Songer with the third of the three barn murals he painted in Huntsville. The other two are of an American Flag and a Cow with the word "Huntsville" underneath it on nearby barns. All the murals can be seen while entering Huntsville from Hwy 39.
Jake Songer speaks about the process of painting the Statue of Liberty mural on a barn in Huntsville.
Jake Songer's dog, Bailey, 2 1/2 years, in his truck full of painting materials at the State of Liberty barn mural he painted in Huntsville.
The second of the murals painted by Jake Songer in Huntsville is an American flag that can be seen from Hwy 39 entering the town.
The Statue of Liberty mural painted on a barn by Jake Songer as seen from Hwy 39 while entering Huntsville.
Jake Songer with his painting materials in front of the third of the three barn murals he painted in Huntsville. This one was of the Statue of Liberty, the other two are of an American Flag and a Cow with the word "Huntsville" underneath it on neighboring barns.
Bill White's barn was the first to have a mural by artist Jake Songer in Huntsville.
HUNTSVILLE — Madison County has its bridges, Ogden Valley has its barns.
At one time, locals say, there were something like 11 full-time dairy operations in Huntsville. They’ve since vanished, but dozens of old barns remain in the area.
Three of those Huntsville barns got something of an extreme makeover this summer, thanks to a couple of local artists and some community-oriented townsfolk.
It all started earlier this year, when Bill and Alane White, of Huntsville, purchased a barn on the outskirts of town. The structure had been on the market for years, and was in desperate need of repairs. In fixing up the barn this summer, the Whites decided to add some art to one side of it.
They commissioned local artist Michal Onyon to create a distinctive image for their barn. That image — featuring a cow, a sparrow, and the name “Huntsville” — was envisioned as an homage to the dairy barn heritage of Ogden Valley.
The Whites then hired another local artist, Huntsville native Jake Songer, to execute the work on their barn.
“I don’t do barns,” Songer tried to tell them. “I paint oil paintings; that’s my career.”
Eventually, the artist agreed to give it a shot. The results spread like, well, like a barn afire.
While Songer was working on the Whites’ barn, fellow Huntsville residents Jeff and Melisa Harrison approached Songer about the possibility of painting their barn. Again, the artist tried to explain that he wasn’t a barn painter.
“I told them, ‘I don’t really do this; this is my first one,” Songer said.
But the Harrisons persisted. So, when Songer finished the Whites’ barn, he moved on to the Harrisons’. He painted a huge American flag, which appears to be waving in the breeze, on their barn.
And — you guessed it — while Songer was working on the Harrisons’ barn, a third Huntsville resident, Clark Wangsgard, approached him.
“I said, ‘Hop in my truck. Have I got a canvas for you,’ ” Wangsgard recalls.
He hired Songer to paint a life-sized section of the Statue of Liberty on the side of his barn. By then, Songer had all but given up telling neighbors that he wasn’t a barn painter.
All three works of art can be seen within a mile of each other, on State Road 39 near the eastern shores of Pineview Reservoir.
Bill White could easily see these barn images spreading throughout Huntsville — and Liberty and Eden as well.
“People have joked, ‘You know, you have the bridges of Madison County, and we might have the barns of Ogden Valley,’ ” White said. “… And there are lots of unpainted barns around here that need a little TLC.”
Melisa Harrison says she and her husband bought their barn about 14 years ago. It used to have an old sign hanging on it, inviting folks to celebrate the Fourth of July. They took the sign down when they repaired the barn.
“We had every intention of putting the sign back up, but it was either stolen or scrapped for trash,” she said.
So when she and her husband started talking about having an image painted on the barn, the subject seemed a no-brainer.
“My husband and I are moved by the patriotism, respect and pride this community has,” she said.
Harrison said when they started talking about putting artwork on their barn, she got on the Internet and started poking around.
“There’s a guy in the Midwest who paints barns as a profession,” she said. “But I didn’t see anything as cool as Jake’s paintings.”
Jake Songer is the son of Huntsville artist Steve Songer. The younger Songer shows his oil paintings at a gallery in Park City.
Besides using large brushes and rollers to apply the paint — and needing to rent a hydraulic cherry picker to reach the “canvas” — what’s the difference between painting oils and painting barns?
“The distance I have to walk to see the whole picture,” Songer says. “On the lift, I’d paint and area, then run back to those trees a thousand yards away and look at it. You know, that’s a lot better exercise than painting in the studio, where you just have to step back 10 feet to get a look at it.”
Songer says there are probably four or five gallons of $40-a-gallon house paint in his Statue of Liberty, representing 12 or 13 different colors. He says the cost for painting the barns was between $5,000 and $12,000 each.
“I’m slightly more expensive than just a solid color, yeah,” he admits.
But Songer also downplays his role in the barns, saying it’s the barn owners who deserve all the credit.
“I’m just the guy who applies the paint,” he said. “All of the impetus for energy and creativity comes from the barn owners. And I think it’s neat the owners are willing to invest in making this community more artistic and unique.”
Songer may be developing a reputation.
“Supposedly, there’s a barn in Milwaukee that a guy wants me to paint,” Songer said. “I’ll find out if I’m doing it by the end of September.”
For the Whites, the beauty of their barn is more than just skin-deep. They also fixed it up on the inside.
“And the inside, from my perspective, was twice as much work as the outside,” White said.
The barn had been used to raise dairy cows initially, and later chinchillas and chickens, according to White.
“The manure in here was that deep,” he says, spreading one hand a foot above the other. “It took months to clean out and rehabilitate.”
Upstairs, in the large hayloft, the Whites installed lights, movable church pews, a movie screen/projector and a sound system. Their daughter recently held a locals-only barn dance up there that attracted about 60 teens from the Valley, and the city is interested in holding an upcoming event there.
White says everybody in Huntsville loves that barn, and they feel a kind of ownership in it. And the mural was definitely a collaborative effort.
When he was ready to begin painting, Songer projected the design onto the side of the barn one night to get a feel for what it would look like, and to make any last-minute changes. In a small town like Huntsville, White knew such an event would attract the neighbors, “so I popped popcorn and provided soda pop,” he said. It turned into a party of sorts.
“This barn, even though I own it, they feel like it belongs to the town,” he said.
And, everybody had an opinion on just exactly what the barn art should look like.
“People would call up and say, ‘Know what I think you should do?’ ” White laughed. “That just shows you the barn means a lot to everybody in town.”
Wangsgard, whose Statue of Liberty mural is illuminated at night by floodlights sitting in a wheelbarrow, is equally pleased with the work Songer did.
“It’s real impressive,” he says. “The only bad thing, I guess, is all the people stopping to take pictures.”
Contact Mark Saal at 801-625-4272, or msaal@standard.net. Follow him on Twitter at @Saalman. Like him on Facebook at facebook.com/SEMarkSaal.
