Belair Donuts Mural To Be Up Just In Time For 4 Year Anniversary This Month
Just last month, Belair Donuts announced that they would be working with Beautify Augusta on a mural project led by local artist, Cole Frank Phail.
How did this project come about?
Michelle Parker, one of the owners of Belair Donuts along with her husband, had been wanting to do a mural at the location for four years. She eventually approached Beautify Augusta, a local non-profit that is all about beautifying Augusta through public displays of artwork from local artists.
Parker had her ideas, but just couldn’t get them to come to fruition. That was until she met local muralist, Cole Frank Phail.
Along with her concept, she had one stipulation, that she would be able to help with the mural. Even with no background in art, she just wanted to help.
Where’d the vision come from?
Parker stated it began with a “very elementary-like pencil drawing.”
And Phail then came up with this graphic, giving the drawing a bit of life.
Phail said this was a majority of the work, coming up with the concept.
“So what I told Cole was I want a coffee river with coffee cups floating on donuts down the river and our logo. And then my husband’s addition was that little coffee cup and donut at the end. He loves those two little guys. So he said that has to be on there,” said Parker.
Every little thing in the painting has a meaning to it.
Parker and her family, come from a military background. They were stationed in several cool places like Hawaii, Korea, and Germany and wanted to incorporate that into the painting.
“This is a Kolache, which is a sausage wrapped in a sweet dough, a Kolache canoe. I wanted to represent Germany with the little German hat on top of the sausage. And then Korea is represented in the mom coffee cups Korean peace fingers, because in Korea every time you take a picture, they put up four fingers, two fingers on each side,” said Parker.
“A mother with her two children kind of representing those that come through and then that’s a businessman, once I add the tie,” Phail said.
Belair Donuts also gets a lot of military customers. So one of the cups will be painted in a camouflage print.
Was this mural worked on at night or during the day?
Phail explained he prefers working on murals during the night.
“It’s just too hot to work out here during the day, so ultimately I usually come out about five o’clock in the afternoon and work through the night.”
But this painting has been a little different.
“I want to incorporate working with her.”
“So he comes like in the blazing heat and we’ve worked on it quite a bit during the day. But he has spent some nights out here, too.” Parker said.
More About the Artist:
Cole, How did you get into doing murals?
“I’ve always painted murals, I guess the easiest way to describe it was in the 11th grade, I took an art class, and thought it was a huge accident. The first painting I did, I was like, that’ll never happen again. To be that good. And then I just realized it’s not something. It was a gift given to me.” Phail said.
“And then I was like, Lord, what am I supposed to be painting? I was like, I wanted to draw skulls and all these snakes and all kind of crazy, cool stuff at the time.”
Phail then started doing “odd” murals while going to school to pay for college.
When he started up his video business, Master Productions, in 1999, he figured the murals would kind of fade out. He did his first job painting the NBC Peacock logo downtown and that job alone paid for his computers and other video production equipment.
“I just finally gave up trying to be a straight-out video production company and I embraced one week I’m in my paint clothes painting a mural the next week. I’m doing this.” Phail stated.
The mural is projected to be finished by their 4-year anniversary ceremony and unveiling on September 26th.
