BELLE — Drivers entering Belle from Highway 89 will have a new sight greeting them upon their arrival in town.

Last month, Osage Arts Community (OAC) welcomed visual artists Madeleine LeMieux, of Columbia, and Lisa Simms, of Kansas City, for a month-long collaborative project culminating in a new mural on the side of OAC’s Studio 103 building, which houses artists in residence.

LeMieux got connected with OAC through Simms, who had a residency there last year. The duo has worked together on mural projects in the past. They met while LeMieux was working with a youth art outreach program in Columbia in which Simms was enrolled. They decided to collaborate on a month-long residency with OAC this year, which ended up happening throughout July. Their proposal was to paint a mural. OAC Executive Director Mark McClane chose the building and gave the artists free rein to design the mural.

“That’s the first time we’ve ever really been able to do that,” Simms said. “That’s kind of rare for a muralist because usually the business or the company gives you the info and then you mock up some sketches, but Mark didn’t even look at our sketch.”

“OAC wanted to celebrate their skills and just say we want them to focus on color and design,” McClane said. “We wanted them to be invigorated by the opportunity and challenge them on what they can do creatively.”

When the artists began planning the mural, Simms worked out a sketch after a couple of hours. Then, she gave it to LeMieux for feedback. They discussed what they liked and did not like and incorporated what they liked into the mural.

“We had a general idea, and we talked a lot about colors and content and how it’s going to take shape,” LeMieux said. “As it goes, we’re following the design. Maybe we should shift this thing or change it up because it’s not working the way we imagined it. Lisa and I, we’ve worked together for years and years, so it’s easy for us to do that on the fly.”

“The collaboration has only actually happened on the wall itself during the process of creating it,” Simms said.

One example Simms identified as a decision made “on the wall” was the text, which she was painting during the interview.

“I’m a graphic design professor at William Woods University, so I was really excited to do this text,” she said. “I love painting text and working with text. It’s my favorite. I already knew that I wanted to do this sans-serif, bold, easy to see from the street text with “Belle” and cursive for Missouri just to add some variation. Today we sat and I just played with a bunch of different fonts and we decided together which one worked the best.”

Simms said the artists’ design is the abstracted form of the Gasconade River, which is significant not only to the communities surrounding it but also to OAC’s visiting artists. The farm where some of OAC’s residents stay is directly along the river.

The mural presents a rough map of the Gasconade River’s path through the area, at least as close as the artists could get to the dimensions of the wall. A star on the mural represents where Belle resides in relation to the river’s winding route.

“We tried to stick with really fun and playful colors because that’s our own personal style,” Simms said. “We both have very intense, fluorescent, vibrant color palettes in all of our work. We just wanted to make it really fun and also reference the beautiful natural landmarks that Belle has to offer.”

Although both artists have extensive experience working on murals, they agreed that one challenge persists no matter how much practice someone has as a painter.

“The weather,” Simms said. “You have to make sure you’re constantly drinking water, and you have your sunscreen and you have your bug spray. If you’re doing a mural for a business, you have to be very clear with them in the contract that the timeline might change because we don’t control the weather.”

“Always, always, always, the greatest challenge with painting murals in the summer is weather,” LeMieux said. “You can’t paint on rain days. If it’s going to rain later, you can’t put paint on a wall. Because it’s the summer, and often you’re outside, it’s really hot.”

The artists lost about a week’s worth of time during their residency because of rain in early July. They worked on other projects during that time.

“Having the time to just focus on work and collaborate with Lisa has been restorative,” LeMieux said.

LeMieux’s background includes arts administration work in nonprofits and running a gallery through the University of Missouri.

“I love that (murals) are public,” she said. “Most of the murals that I do use a community process where the person who commissions the mural has ideas for what they want but doesn’t know what it looks like. I worked with a team in Columbia through the CARE (Career Awareness Related Experience) program. I had 17 teenagers learning the process of how to create a mural. They did brainstorming and design work. We’d give presentations to the stakeholders. They’d give feedback and we’d make changes.”

Once the design was ready, the group would invite people from the community to help paint the mural before touching it up and sealing it.

“Anyone who can paint and knows the basics about how to prep a wall can paint a mural,” LeMieux said. “But this was different. It was about creating investment in the community.”

LeMieux said her involvement in previous nonprofits made OAC a draw to her.

“(OAC) is kind of my jam,” she said. “We’ve talked a lot to Mark (McClane) about our enthusiasm for the project he has here and all its potential. As a result, I’ve brought a bunch of people out here to get familiar.”

LeMieux said she hoped the networking between OAC and the arts scene in Columbia could bring more artists back and forth between the two towns. She said embracing the arts is important for a community because it is an economic driver in communities. More public art, such as the new OAC mural, can draw people to town. When it does, they become more likely to stick around and shop at local businesses.

The Studio 103 mural is the fourth OAC has put in Belle. McClane said the organization is bringing more to town in the future and helping local property owners connect with artists they can contract for public art.

“I look forward to the community contacting me so I can put them with professional mural artists so they can work to put more murals in our community,” he said.