New Route 66 mural goes up in Lexington

With the help of a local teenager, the Route 66 town of Lexington, Illinois, boasts a new mural that pays tribute to the Mother Road.

Karen Wingo, owner of the Thrift Avenue store at Main Street and Route 66 in Lexington, told the Galva News how the project landed area high-school student Ana Cappis as its creator:

“I wanted something large and attention-grabbing to give people that feeling of how driving down Route 66 used to feel,” Wingo said. “So I contacted the Walldogs and tried several times to get their interest, but I never did get any response back. When I talked to City Hall, Starlette Torkelson, who is one of the city hall clerks, said she’d look around and happened to pass along the contact information of Ana and her mother.”
Cappis, daughter of Jay and Denise Cappis and currently a sophomore at University High School in Normal, became interested in creating a mural after she started noticing the bare exterior walls on buildings around town. Ana’s mother said she would bring it up at a Lexington City Council meeting. Although Cappis’ initial idea was turned down, she received a call from Wingo on June 5.
“The first time I sat down to talk about ideas with Karen, it took us a while to plan out everything she wanted in the mural,” Cappis said. “We originally started off with one giant mural, but then she suggested we break it up into a bunch of smaller pictures, I thought of it as a collage.”

The city paid $350 for the paint, and Wingo paid for the rest. Cappis spent about a three hours a day this summer on the project.

Here’s a brief video by Thrift Avenue showing the mural:

The mural isn’t completely done. Wingo plans to add solar-powered lighting so the artwork can be seen at night.

(Image of the Route 66 mural in Lexington, Illinois, by Thrift Avenue via Facebook)