Award-winning wilderness artist, Jerry Antolik, hand-painted the mural that extends the entire 100-foot-long south wall of the new Camp Perry Air Gun Range. The mural took nearly three months to complete.

CAMP PERRY, OHIO - Award-winning wilderness artist and friend of the Civilian Marksmanship Program, Jerry Antolik, has captured the character of competitive shooting at Camp Perry on a stunning new hand-painted mural at the CMP Marksmanship Center air gun range.

 

The artwork, which spans the entire 100-foot-long south wall of the new airgun range, celebrates the development of today's young shooters while honoring a century-plus tradition of competitive shooting at Camp Perry.

"It kind of speaks for itself," says Antolik, 63, of Hudson, Wyoming. "I love public art because it's for everybody."

Born and raised in Pennsylvania, Antolik began his career working while he attended the Cooper School of Art in Cleveland, Ohio and continued to learn his trade in stints with American Greetings and Designs Unlimited in the 1970s.

Soon he headed west to Colorado and Wyoming where he broke out of the framework of commercial art and began capturing landscapes and wildlife on canvas.

“I enjoy working on location so that I can capture those favorite places with small studies”, he said. He is comfortable painting life-size works and murals. “I have had to overcome my training as a studio artist, letting go of old ideas and growing into new ones.”

Antolik has painted exterior murals in the Wyoming cities of Rawlins, Lander, Riverton, and Hudson and in Ticaboo, Utah. Banks and museums in Wyoming cities of Jackson, Cody, Powell, Lander, Sheridan and Riverton display his interior murals.

To start the massive project, Antolik pencil sketched a half-inch scale drawing. Antolik used photos from the CMP Archives and observed the 2009 Camp Perry Open to sketch the mural.

Antolik's CMP mural project began as a pencil sketch soon after Board Vice Chair Judith Legerski asked him to consider the project in late 2008.

"They flew me out here to see the center during a big match and I spent four or five days here," he said. "When I talked to CMP Director Gary Anderson during my visit in January, I asked him to use one word to describe what this wall was meant to be.

"And the first word that came out of his mouth was 'youth'," Antolik recalled.

With that in mind, he shot numerous photographs of airgun competitors, collected archive photos of past competitions and studied the wall to get a feel for the space to determine the scale the artwork would require.

He returned to Wyoming with a wealth of information and started with a four-foot mural concept in pencil and sent the sketch to CMP for consideration.

"I went home and put this pencil sketch together. It's kind of an important step - sort of a Mickey Mouse thing, but at the same time it was everything, really," Antolik said.

"I did a half-inch scale drawing for a 100-foot wall and began to position figures and groupings, trying to fill this whole space. I just sent them this pencil drawing - no colors at that point."

CMP approved Antolik's concept and he began the project in June, finishing it in August. He worked evenings and overnight because the facility was in use throughout the National Matches.

He transferred his scale drawing to the massive space by enlarging the sketch by pencil on the wall. In doing so, he said much of the detail was lost through expansion and he was challenged to fill in the missing information.

Once the wall sketch was complete he began applying vibrant 100 percent professional acrylic colors and captured the essence of the Camp Perry shooting experience - a mixture of shooting disciplines and nostalgia. While the central focus of the mural is youth and airgun competition, he figuratively brought the outdoors inside and also honored older shooters by illustrating them as youngsters.

The largest brush he used was only three inches wide and most of the roundness and soft edges he created were done by using his bare hands.

Antolik used a palette of basic colors and blended them to match several 12-inch color "studies" of each grouping that he prepared in advance from black and white photos or pencil sketches. It's the same palette he's been using for 30 years.

“The upside of using acrylic paint is its brilliance and long lifespan”, Antolik said. “The trouble with this media is that it dries as soon as it hits the wall.”

"It was about a four-step process using warm and cool colors," Antolik related. "It's easy to do on a 10 by 12-inch format but when you have a 100-foot span, it's a little different."

Jerry explained that he created mini-studies of each piece for the mural.

From left to right, Antolik sketched an outdoor range scene with typical Camp Perry images like seagulls, the water tower and the always-familiar shooter shuttle. The illustration flows into an archival scene of young shooters checking results on a scoreboard followed by a line of precision air rifle shooters on the firing line.

Antolik's vignette of precision shooters was inspired by junior champions like Matt Rollins and Emily Holsopple, who were firing on the indoor range during his January visit.

Jerry stands next to the Precision Air Rifle figures in the mural. The largest figure in the mural stands about 15 feet tall.

The mural towers to a height of 20 feet at its apex and slopes downward on each end, following the profile of the center's roofline. The largest human figure in the mural stands about 15 feet tall. Just right of the entranceway the mural winds around and above a closet which spans the remaining 40 feet of the wall to the west.

That portion of the mural, above the closet wall, depicts an outdoor target berm with an American bald eagle perched atop one of the target carriers. Eagles are once again a common sight in the area and are both mutually respected as a national symbol and lamented for occasionally halting Camp Perry outdoor competitions.

The west-facing closet door features an illustration from archive of a young smallbore shooter known as Tommy Bayless, who steadies his rifle with one hand and cradles his pet dog with the other.

Antolik admitted to deviating from the original sketch by secretly adding an illustration of CMP Director Gary Anderson overseeing range activity, as Gary so often does. Antolik included the portrait with permission of Mrs. Legerski, unbeknownst to the Director.

"Gary's illustration was my idea. I kept it covered with a cloth so he couldn't see it," Antolik related. "I know he wouldn't want it up there; that's just the humble guy Gary is."

The west end of the closet wall bears the likeness of a large American flag and a U.S. Marine Corps pistol shooter, who may be recognized by many as Retired Gunnery Sergeant and multiple National Champion Brian Zins.

With apologies, Antolik explained that he did not wish to discriminate against other military services by using the likeness of a Marine in the mural at the exclusion of others.

"We earlier used this illustration in a printed piece commemorating the Centennial and it was just a natural fit. There simply isn't enough room to represent everyone and I think that will be understood," he said.

The mural, which depicts a disabled pistol shooter firing from a wheelchair and a young woman pointing her sporter air rifle downrange, concludes with those illustrations on the west end of the closet wall.

Antolik credits his former mentor and friend Matt Danko and Antolik's wife Sherry for assisting with the completion of the mural. Sherry is an art teacher and sporter shooter as well. Both assistants are accomplished artists and contributed with onsite advice and blocking he said.

When the mural was nearly complete Antolik reflected on the project with fondness.

"What impresses me about the CMP is they have a vision and they know what they want. They give me the freedom to use my abilities and don't art direct me. They know I'm going to do a good job - I may not do it quickly, but I'm going to do it right," he said.

"One of the shooters I illustrated recently took a picture of himself with his cell phone. He's about 13 feet tall up there - and that's what's so neat about public art. There's no way he could afford to have a painting of himself that large," Antolik said.

"But when you come in here and feel the heartbeat of this place and you turn around, it fits.”

"It doesn't detract - I think if it adds to the space then I've done my job. I want people to like it and I'm getting some good feedback and that just blesses my heart," Antolik concluded.