Sebring to unveil mural Friday
By KEVIN HOWELLArticle Photos
SEBRING- After over two years and 1000 hours of planning and painting, 1999 West Branch High School graduate Dirk Rozich's mural at Schreckengrost Park in Sebring is ready for its dedication, scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Friday at the corner of Oregon Avenue and 15th Street.
The dedication will kick off the village's second annual downtown Harvest Festival.
Commissioned by Paul Schreckengost of the Viktor Schreckengost Foundation in the spring of 2006 to paint the mural, Rozich said he spent around 300 hours researching and sketching the mural before he began to transfer the image he designed onto the wall in the park. Manipulating the scene in a computer program and projecting it onto the side of the building for tracing, he began work in July of 2007, broke for winter in October, and continued from mid-May 2008 until completion in September.
Depicting 22 individuals influential to Sebring's history, most of whom are of the Schreckengost family, the 1,800 square-foot mural is more of a community project than the smaller images he is used to creating, Rozich said.
"Creating a piece of work that the community can accept as their own is one of the main reasons I took on this project," he said. "It is no longer my painting, but the community's. And that is more rewarding than any sum of money."
In addition to the 22 individuals, the mural also depicts the village's seven original potteries, the F.A. Sebring Mansion Inn and Spa, a 1912 Chrysler Sebring 6, the park's grand archway and fountain, the Sebring school district fighting Trojan mascot, a B-17G Flying Fortress dedicated to World War II veteran Ray Crewson, the village's official seal and two pedal vehicles, a baby buggy and a murray bicycle all designed by Sebring native and world-renowned industrial designer Viktor Schreckengost.
Interacting with community members has been interesting, too, Rozich said.
"I had lots of visitors while I was working," he said. "One of my biggest fears was that people wouldn't recognize the people I was drawing, so to have people constantly telling me what a great job I was doing was encouraging."
As an editorial illustrator and web and graphic designer, Rozich's career has been mostly creating small pieces for clients that are lost to him once sold, a problem avoided with the Schreckengost Park mural.
"One of the hardest things is letting smaller pieces go, but this will always be here, close to home," he said.
Creating the image was not easy, though, requiring sketching full bodies of real people, 90 percent of whom were already deceased, according to Rozich.
But with the assistance and patience of his fiancee, Nicole Walin, Rozich completed the sketches by using photos for the heads and snapshots of himself in a suit for the males and Walin for the females.
The Schreckengost Park Mural is Rozich's seventh mural, but only his second public one. The other mural can be seen at the Julz jewelry store on Market Street in downtown Canton. He will shortly begin work painting ceiling murals at the Sebring Mansion.
To view more of Rozich's work visit www.dirkrozich.com.
Kevin Howell can be reached at khowell@salemnews.net
