Mural adds color to Highland Park

When Tracy Poole bought a house along 11th Street with her sister Robin Poole and brother-in-law Mikal Werre, they all knew something had to be done with the wall of stark white privacy fence surrounding the yard, especially one tall portion that faces 11th Street at an angle, and over the past week their idea, a giant mural, has taken shape.

The artist is Mandy Moonbird, Robin Poole and Mikal Werre's daughter, who has been drawing and painting her whole life. Her aunt Tracy Poole says she is "a phenomenal artist."

"We were trying to figure out what to do, and started throwing ideas around, and my sister mentioned that the college athletics were the Northern Lights," Tracy Poole said. "And, well, the high school is the Blue Ponies, and it just came together with the Bear Paw Mountains, and she just ran with it after that."

The mural, a dark-blue night scene displaying a herd of blue horses galloping across a vast plain with the Bear Paw Mountains, northern lights and a star-filled sky as the backdrop.

When Moonbird was interviewed Saturday, she said she was planning to wrap up the project by the end of Sunday, and after the paint has had time to dry, her family will add a clear coating for UV protection. They are also trying to figure out how to add reflective ground glass to the painting.

Moonbird said the project was easy to envision because her favorite color is blue and she loves horses, and she wasn't daunted by the size of the project.

"I've done some (murals)," she said, "but this is one of the biggest."

"She's always posting pictures of all the artwork that she's done," Poole said. "She's just really a natural."

In her working life, Moonbird handles logistics for remote science stations in places like Antarctica, Alaska and Greenland and, she said, she always takes her art supplies with her wherever she goes. She was at a science station when the pandemic hit, but being quarantined wasn't a hardship because she got to spend her days creating artwork - doing a whole series of images on the brown bags that her sack lunches were delivered in.

Moonbird and her family are already tossing around ideas for what to do with the rest of the fence, especially since so many people have stopped to tell them how much they enjoy the mural so far.

Robin Poole said that one neighbor stopped to say that this is the best thing that's happened in the neighborhood for 25 years, and less than a minute after she said that, a passing car slowed down and the driver yelled out the window, "Looking good!"

For her finishing touches, Moonbird said, she wants to add some color and maybe some glow-in-the-dark paint for constellations.

"Once this is down," she said of the mural layout, "I can just start throwing on more random color. Yeah, just more color. I want to make it kind of weirder the longer you look at it."