Patriotic silo sparking interest in Monett, Mo.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KY3) - Located by the railroad tracks just a block off the main road into downtown, a 130 year-old silo has been given new life with a fresh coat of paint.

But that paint was applied by Branson resident Raine Clotfelter, a former illustrator and draftsman in the Navy who’s now known as “America’s Muralist” for traveling the country and painting large murals on the side of buildings in towns that usually depicts the history of that community.

That’s not the only professional work that Raine has done. He estimates he has done around 170 art projects with about 60 percent of those giant murals from Montana to Ft. Sill, Oklahoma.

His wife Tricia helps with the projects and Raine says the couple delights in meeting new people in various towns and helping to tell their story with an artist rendering on one of their buildings.

“I don’t know how this happened but it is the coolest thing,” Raine said with a laugh. “Anything that has to do with a mural I want to do it. The harder or bigger the challenge the more I want to do it.”

Raine had already painted a mural depicting Monett’s history in the downtown area two years ago when the Monett Main Street organization approached him about doing another project.

The old silo two blocks from the other mural seemed like a great location and instead of doing another history-of-the-town painting, Raine suggested a patriotic theme and his new creation of a huge eagle staring down on the town with an American flag draped around it has proved to be quite popular. Photos of the mural have been widely shared on social media and scores of visitors stop by to have photos taken beneath it.

“I have never had a mural get so much national attention as this one,” Raine said. “We’ve had people from Kansas, Nebraska, Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma, Texas, and Maryland. We had a guy contact us from Columbus, Ohio after his sister from Arizona had been there and sent him pictures. He’s got a silo and we’re going to start on his silo this spring. I’ve been over there (to Monett) about four times and it’s like a parking lot full of people at the base of that thing every time I go.”

“A lot of people are liking to take their motorcycles or their hot rod cars and take pictures in front of the mural,” Tricia added. “I think it’s just the time that we’re in to encourage patriotism. I think that’s part of why this has kind of exploded.”

The mural takes up most of the silo which is 88-feet around and 66-feet tall. The eagle itself is 35-feet with a beak that’s 18-feet long and feathers that are eight-feet long. So there’s a lot of intricate work involved and as you might expect, a lot of obstacles along the way.

If you’ve ever had trouble getting the right mix of paint, take solace in the fact that even the professionals have that problem too.

“We used a graffiti-proof clear coat at the bottom and the first thought was to just paint the whole thing with clear coat,” Raine recalled. “So I get about a third of the mural (done) with this clear coat and it was all kind of muddy looking, white-and milky. It turned out I was mixing it wrong. You were supposed to add water to it and let it set for 15 minutes. I didn’t know this. So I had to go back, we figured it was about 2,800 square-feet, and sand it and repaint it.”

Then there was the bad weather including a storm that caused the paint to run.

“It was raining and all this red paint (from the flag) was running down the eagle’s face,” Raine said. “I was just shaking my head going, ‘No, no, no!’ But it rained so hard that all the red paint that was running down washed off. It didn’t hurt it a bit.”

Raine said that while the silo had its challenges, a Yakov Smirnoff sign in Branson was actually his scariest project. A likeness of Smirnoff’s face actually stuck out from the sign and Raine said he and Tricia had to get off the lift they usually paint from and use harnesses to get around Yakov’s 3-D face.

“We were climbing all over that thing like monkeys,” Raine said. “We couldn’t stay on the lift because there was no other way of doing it.”

Thank goodness the Clotfelter’s survived Yakov’s face and it’s nice to know that their murals will survive for generations in the communities where their paintings about the town’s history will now become part of that history as well.

Monett plans on having a ceremony to commemorate the “Freedom Silo” on October 10 at 6 p.m.

The public is invited.

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