Petrified

Artist

Willow Sedam

Year

2021

Description

Colorado has an extensive and significant place in the history of paleontology, one that Willow wanted to explore in her piano mural design. Her mural celebrates the ancient history of the state, and the amazing fossils that have been uncovered here. Her goal is to marry fully-fleshed recreations of dinosaurs with the actual fossilized skeletons we find in the ground, to bring nostalgic, paleontological whimsy along with the geology. She wants to inspire people to imagine dinosaurs not just as dusty, old skeletons, but as the amazing and very alive creatures they once were.

Each dinosaur represented is one that lived in Colorado millions of years ago, and each one plays a vital role in the history of paleontology in the state. On the front of the piano is a triceratops, a dinosaur that was first discovered in the world in Denver in 1887. Also represented on the piano is: Colorado’s state dinosaur (and another species first discovered here) the stegosaurus; a brontosaurus, one of the dinosaurs found in droves at Dinosaur Ridge; a plesiosaur which would have inhabited the prehistoric sea that covered Colorado during the Cretaceous period; and the tiny, two-and-a-half foot long Fruitadens, named after Fruita, Colorado, where it was first unearthed.

Willow Sedam is an emerging artist working in a multitude of media, including fiber arts,
ceramics, digital art and painting. She grew up catching frogs and snails in her backyard in southern California, and never fully shook the habit. Her love of nature and day job as a science educator and animal care technician find their way into her work. Her passion is bringing appreciation to the most unusual and overlooked animals through her art. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado with her two rabbits, one tarantula, and forty-five Madagascar hissing cockroaches.

Photos

Completed mural front

Completed mural back

Mural in progress