Wenzel houses a new immersive mural in Covington that open to the public on October 19th.

It's in Tobacco Alley next to Wenzel Whiskey.

See this Out of the Ordinary Mural and our weekly arts and culture segment we call Tapestry.

The whole idea was that when you would walk into this house and you would feel like you're in the house, and that's why the mural on both sides of the alley and I wanted it to be you couldn't quite tell if things were if it was real or not.

The city of Covington offered a quality of place grant So I wrote for that and got it.

I have never done anything like this before, so it was a lot of problem solving, figuring things out.

And as you can see, we we figured it out.

So it was a huge learning experience.

The project has been in the works for about two years, but we've been painting for a year.

This came about right when I graduated art school.

A friend came to me and offered me a position here and it was hard to envision because nothing like this has ever been done before.

But you know, when you're a fresh graduate, you're like a job in painting.

Absolutely.

It was really great to work with a bunch of painters and be able to collaborate and get feedback every single day from everybody working together.

We worked with a team of 14 artists total and you know, we all paint 14 different ways, so we had to navigate that, find our strengths and we kind of bounced a lot of things off of each other.

And that really added to the consistency of the entire mural.

They're all so talented and they were fantastic to work with and it was really neat because when they were painting, we were inside and and I would walk in and I would they wouldn't know that I was there and I would hear them all.

There would be music playing and they would be talking and just hanging out and painting.

And you could tell they were all very happy and they were friends.

And and it was just this wonderful environment.

What I want is for people to come and play in the alley and have fun.

So you start with you start with the sampler, and that leads you to the scavenger hunt that leads you through the alley.

So there are lots of things to see if you're not a puzzle person.

There are lots of things to see and tons of details.

Since it is interactive, you get to touch things, you get to.

You're more influenced and you're more likely to get up and up close and personal and want to be able to solve To solve.

The puzzles on.

The map was the first idea.

That's where it started.

But it didn't take long for me to realize it was going to be really hard.

So if there were kids, if there were, you would probably have to look things up.

And I didn't want to use any technology.

There are places on the map and then the addresses and what you have to do is figure out what is at that address and then what in the mural corresponds or represents what's at that address.

So what I realized was people coming from out of town that it's going to be hard.

The artist came up with this idea of the silhouettes and hiding it in Each artist got to pick an item.

And so each of these items have meaning to the artist.

It's just about beautifying Covington this alleyway, it was just kind of drab before.

There wasn't really anything going on back here.

And this just really highlights this area and makes it an interactive art piece.

You know, it's something so much better than just an alleyway now.

Once the distillery reopens, I think that people will come up from distillery tours and people out of town will then come and they'll be in the alley.

And so it'll be kind of a tourist attraction.

I love those alley projects.

So just in case you're wondering, the artist did not directly paint on the surface of the historic buildings in the alley.

Instead, they painted on separate panels.

I was curious to.