Photo by Bill Petzold • Millington artist Jeff Bolzman began work on a mural Monday featuring Millington farmer Ed Sergent and his draft horses working ground with a single-bottom Parker plow that was built in Vassar in the late 19th or early 20th Century. The mural, which is located on the side of Frank’s Meat Market, 8481 State Road in Millington, is being funded by the GFWC Millington Junior Women’s Club, the first “Art in the Community” the group has undertaken.
By Bill Petzold
Editor
MILLINGTON — It’s an artwork created by a Millington artist, featuring a Millington farmer driving his team of horses at a Millington Old-Fashioned Summer Festival event.
And thanks to the Millington Junior Women’s Club, the roughly six foot by 16 foot mural soon will adorn the side of Frank’s Meat Market at 8481 State Road in downtown Millington. The mural will be located on the upper portion of the building facing M-15.
Artist Jeff Bolzman began work Monday on a depiction of farmer Ed Sergent and his team of horses. Jody Dean of the Junior Women’s Club called the mural the first “Art in the Community” project.
“We do projects to promote art, conservation — all kinds of stuff — and we wanted to do an art project for the town, and we wanted to do something that everybody could appreciate,” Dean said. “So we started in another part of town, and then that kind of fell through, and we had somebody else who was going to do it. Then Mr. Bolzman teaches art in Lapeer, he’s a community resident here, he’s done art for years and years … so I went to him and he said, ‘Let me see what I can work up.’ So he wanted something historical, something that would have said something about Millington. So he’s been working on this quite a while, and when he got the idea together he gave me a call and said, ‘It looks like we’re going to do it.’ ”
Dean said the JWC is funding the project with money raised through their Summer Festival Prince and Princess event, and that it’s been two years in the making. Thanks to good weather Monday, Bolzman was able to block in the general shapes of the horses and Sergent behind the plow by 10 a.m. Then he began the process of painting the scene, which he expects to take about a week, weather permitting. Bolzman has painted a number of murals, some of which can be viewed on Facebook at JBMurals.
Bolzman recalled attending a threshing show in Millington years ago when his sons were small, and that memory became synonymous with Millington. He was the art teacher at St. Paul’s Lutheran School for eight years prior to teaching for the past 13 years in Lapeer.
“When Jody asked last year to do a mural in Millington, one of the first things that came into my head was this image of plowing — the agriculture, and it works really well with Frank’s because they do a lot of natural foods and stuff,” Bolzman said.
Bolzman worked up a drawing from a photograph, then created a grid so he could scale up the image to full size.
And while the image is certainly large, the painted horses will still seem small in comparison to Sergent’s 2,350-pound Belgian draft horses, Carrie and Roxie, who are pictured in the mural.
This is the second time Sergent has been depicted in a mural, the first at the Woolen Mill in Frankenmuth (along with the author and his grandfather, who incidentally were painted in the same mural from photos also taken at the Old Fashioned Summer Festival’s threshing show in the mid 1980s).
Sergent said that the photo of him walking behind a single-bottom plow was taken about 1986 or 87 at the threshing show that took place at Floyd Kitelinger’s farm. Sergent currently is the farm manager at Grandpa Tiny’s Farm in Frankenmuth, where he cares for the horses. The photo of Sergent and his horses can be seen at grandpatinysfarm.com.
“I drove by (the mural) this morning, I had to get feed down at the mill, but it’s looking pretty good,” Sergent said.
And lest farmers get nostalgic for the “good old days” of farm technology, Sergent explained that the walk-behind method took substantially longer to till ground than today’s machinery, although the machinery he’s depicted using is a piece of local agricultural history.
“In good conditions you can plow an acre per day per horse,” Sergent said. “That’s a one-bottom plow, and that plow is a Parker plow made in Vassar. The Parker Plow Company was in Vassar from 1893 until 1907, and then they moved to Richmond and were in business until the end of the 1930s.”
Dean said the Junior Women’s Club is looking for new members and welcomes community-minded women to help them promote and beautify Millington. For information, contact Dean at momdean@charter.net or 871-3948.