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Forensic artist takes on another kind of art Date published: 11/20/2011
SHARON LANE BLANCHARD often helps out police in Stafford County and Fredericksburg as a volunteer police forensic sketch artist. She interviews victims and witnesses, producing startlingly accurate likenesses. Sometimes her sketches appear in newspapers and on TV news. She says she wants to use her artistic gift and her gift for putting people at ease in conversation to give back to the community.
Over the past week or so, the resident of North Clearview Heights in southern Stafford been focusing on a different sort of art, painting 6-foot "Nutcracker" Christmas murals on the windows of the Courtyard by Marriott in the Fredericksburg Historic District. Her day job is working in sales for the Marriott, and other employees there have helped with her with the windows. Painting the murals, she says, is another way to give back to the community--and perhaps at the same time get some people into the Marriott Bistro over the holidays for a hot toddy or a hot chocolate. It's a change of gears that essentially comes down to shifting from alleged felons to Frosty the Snowman, who's a little suspect himself. There may be some similarities in subjects. Frosty seems to be in quite a hurry to leave the scene at the end of his story. Then there's the kingpin of Christmas himself, Santa Claus. Santa could be breaking a number of laws: That warning alone might be enough to cause some to buy deadbolt locks and perhaps even shotguns. Then he allegedly sneaks down chimneys, entering homes while defenseless families are asleep. No photographs of Santa or Frosty exist. So it's probably a good thing to have accurate renderings in order to know what these characters look like, for security purposes. Blanchard, who won't reveal her age, didn't say if she was frightened by Santa as a little girl. But she has been drawing and painting furiously since then.
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