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January 19, 2017
By David Nordby The Brillion News
BRILLION – Since the idea was first conceptualized the Brillion Community Center’s Indoor Splash Pad has been a community effort. There’s no better example of that than Lexi Piepenburg who is turning the walls surrounding the splash pad into her own personal canvas.
“I knew I really wanted to do it right away when they asked me,” Piepenburg said. Piepenburg won awards from the Brillion Optimist Club when she was still in high school and the Optimist Club didn’t forget her talents.
“I saw her for four years in a row at those art awards,” Sarah Pielhop, Optimist Club member and the brain behind the Splash Pad, said. “She won every year she was in high school. Lexi has a confidence about her.”
The confidence allowed Piepenburg to treat the massive wall like an expanded canvas, as she described it. She first came up with her design on paper and presented it to club members. Once they approved it she used gridlines for measurements on the wall.
Her measurements were a little bit off, but once she began penciling the walls, the massive rough draft only took a day and a half.
“I surprised myself there, it was faster than I thought,” Piepenburg said.
The 2014 Brillion High School graduate is currently a student at UW-Madison and is spending her winter break on the project. Piepenburg is majoring in animal science and plans to be a veterinarian but painting has been a part of her since she was young.
“I still really love art so it was awesome I could do something like this,” Piepenburg said. She took her seriousness for art to the next level in high school. Piepenburg’s favorite specialty was many oil paintings of horses, with various colors to illustrate different moods.
Piepenburg has had a couple of friends assist in small ways, with her most special helper being her grandmother, Terri Piepenburg, helping with the painting of base layers.
Please see the complete story in the January 19, 2017 edition of The Brillion News.