2022 mural in The Dalles, Ore.
By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
SEPT. 23, 2022 | A Lilburn artist is part of the team “The Wall Dogs,” an elite international group, which selects a town each year where they paint murals on walls of that town, transforming it beautifully. He is Sonny Franks, who has produced two wall paintings in Lilburn, the “Lilburn Tunnel Bridge” on the Cofer building, and “Butterflies” on the Lilburn Park Rest Room.
He traveled this summer to The Dalles, Oregon, where with 220 other “wall dogs” from around the world, they painted 15 murals in four days. Every year, for 25 years, Wall Dogs gather in some town and transform its vacant walls into historic works of art. Next March they will be in High Springs, Fla., and in August in Centerville, Iowa.
The town provides a theme and cleans and prepares the actual wall to be painted well in advance of the team’s arrival. The first town where they painted was Allerton, Iowa, and the original Wall Dogs had so much fun they decided to paint murals in towns each year. One of the murals in The Dalles this year was 180 feet long on a wall for an entire city block.
Once there, project leaders are picked to come up with the authentic historical depiction. On Wednesday night they project their art work on the wall, outline it with a Sharpie pen, and the painting begins on Thursday morning. It’s finished by Sunday. Later the painting gets a water-based industrial clear coating to protect it.
Franks paints.
Franks, a mural project leader this year again, says of this year’s painting: “Daytime, the temperature was up to 103 degrees in The Dalles. Midday, we took a long break, a siesta, but were back at work by 2:30 p.m., and luckily, it was shady by about 3:15, and made it bearable. We also painted at night.”
While the professional artists do a majority of the painting, the Wall Dogs encourage local residents to help with the painting. Franks says: “We had 47 locals working with us, some the whole time, others for only an hour or so. Later they can ride by and see their names on that wall.”
For the last two years, with the pandemic, the Wall Dogs haven’t been active for the last two years. Franks has been a project leader on nine teams. This year his mural featured Ben Snipes from the 1850s. Snipes, a gold miner, recognized the area needed meat, so he became a cattle rancher, selling meat to the gold miners in the West, and even in Canada. He later was a banker and town leader.
A mural Franks painted in Waverly, R.I.
Franks, a native of Columbia, S.C., and a Clemson graduate, got into painting after producing T-shirts for rock bands. He and his wife, the former Peggy Hill of Decatur, have one adult daughter. They have lived in Lilburn for 42 years.
He got into wall painting after he met a guy he calls “Mr. Pillsbury,” a sign painter. “He was a small Colonel Sanders with a beret.” He was lettering a large sign for the University of South Carolina. Later Franks learned techniques such as pinstriping…airbrushing….gold leaf. “It just grew from there…people needing signs.” And Franks, now 71, has been doing it ever since.
When communities attract the Wall Dogs, Franks says: “It’s hard to explain the magic. It’s more than just a sign on a wall. It’s community pride. And we always hide something in the mural for people to find. People told us that Ben Snipes rescued wiener dogs (dachshunds), so we put some of those dogs in the painting, chasing the cattle. That’s fun!”
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