A colorful, welcoming mural on the Five Star Trail came together far faster than artist Zachary Rutter anticipated.
It took a little more than two weeks to complete, progress that Rutter attributed to support from volunteers.
“We had about a dozen people that were just passionately excited about this project from start to finish,” he said.
The mural inside the tunnel on the trail near Lynch Field in Greensburg was finished last month just in time to greet walkers, joggers and bicyclists who participated in the Five Star Trail’s annual Poker Run. Volunteer work started in late May and they and Rutter, of Pittsburgh, worked as time permitted over several weeks.
The project was spurred by an idea from Natalie Dobrick who had connected with Rutter at a past Greensburg event.
“The fact that it turned out so perfectly, I think he was just as amazed,” Dobrick said.
Volunteers handled some of the dirty work at first to get the old railroad tunnel ready for a fresh coat of paint. They scraped portions of an old mural painted by Girl Scouts more than 20 years ago and applied primer. Rutter said volunteers painted the trail, grass and sky and he spray painted outlines for the people, animals, buildings and other figures.
Paintbrushes were then put in the hands of volunteers who followed a paint-by-number system to make trees, grass, animals and people take shape. Rutter went back through with can after can of black spray paint and finished up the outlines. It’s a 460-foot mural, his biggest yet, that depicts the history of the trail and current events in the area.
Dobrick said she likes the part that features the circus, which used to take place at the Huff Avenue trailhead in South Greensburg, the best. Rutter said his favorite is the baby ducks, which sometimes are seen in the spring in a wetland area also near the Huff Avenue trailhead. There were some setbacks — vandals hit the mural with graffiti and humidity and rain made wet paint run.
Rutter personalized the artwork by adding pictures of a bird and a dog he met while working on it. He said he enjoyed chatting with passersby.
“That as a really big surprise, how responsive the community was to the project,” he said. “I don’t always do murals as fun as this one,” Rutter said.
The Five Star Trail runs along a rail line from Lynch Field in Greensburg to Youngwood that is used for walking, running and bicycling. It was established in the mid-1990s, and the Five Star Trail Chapter works with the Regional Trail Corp.
Dobrick estimated about 50 volunteers helped throughout the project. She hopes to find another way to make an impact in Greensburg.
“Now that it’s finished, I’m just looking for my next thing to do,” she said. “I’ve never really been involved in something this big. This is what I like to do.”
