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Sharon Blanchard touches up her 'Nutcracker' murals on the windows of the Courtyard by Marriott hotel in downtown Fredericksburg.
Sharon Blanchard does forensic sketches for local law enforcement agencies. She's using |
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.
She was a paralegal for 20 years before going into marketing. Looking at police sketch art of perps in papers and on TV, she thought to herself that they often weren't good enough to be helpful in apprehending criminals, and that she could do better.
She knew that the experience she'd had interviewing witnesses and victims as a paralegal would help her as a police sketch artist. It has indeed proved useful, because she sometimes has to interview people who have been traumatized by crimes, and she is able to put them at ease and get them to remember details. "It's as much getting along as knowing the questions to ask," she says.
She recently worked a double murder case in Chesterfield County, she says
"Some have been through horrific events," she says. "One woman saw her son murdered in front of her." She said she's an emotional person, and has to steel herself at those moments.
Both of her brothers were in law enforcement.
"I thought, 'What better way to use my artistic ability than to help police catch criminals?' I don't charge." She said many sheriff's offices and police departments don't have the budget to hire a sketch artist, and use kits that she believes don't produce good results.
Blanchard does a much wider variety of art than police sketches and store windows. ABC found an abstract painting she had done online at finaartsamerica .com and bought it to be used in a scene in the home of one of the characters on "Desperate Housewives," she says.
Her police work may be seen online at sharonblan chardforensicartist.com.
She says painting the store windows was a nice change of pace, "but challenging because the figures are so large."
Marriott Bistro workers including Missy Cook assisted her. "It was fun," said Cook.
"It was cold and windy out there but it was a lot of fun."
Cook said the only painting she had done before was house painting. "I've never done art, and I enjoyed it."
Blanchard hopes more people try their hands at art.
"Anybody can draw," she said. "Anybody can paint. They just have to have the courage to try to do it. They may not be the best at the beginning, but it's fun and can be rewarding."
Especially when your art helps catch a crook.
Michael Zitz: 540/846-5163
Email: mikez@freelancestar.com
