On to Belgium for a much more rustic experience. After landing in Paris and spending a few days there getting over our jetlag and finding our way to the top of the Eiffel Tower, we made the trip to Bevern aan den IJzer (good luck with that one), a rural farming town within walking distance to the France/Belgium border (we know because we walked to France one evening). Our host, Hendrik, picked us up in his girlfriend’s olive green 1980 Volkswagen Golf and we whizzed through the quaint Belgian countryside as he told us all about the history of the area. We arrived at the brewery and started to settle in.
The VW Golf.
The brewery complex is dominated by a massive brick building with a towering smokestack proudly displaying FEYS in white stone. There are three brick malting towers where the malted grain was stored before being augured through the building to be brewed into delicious Belgian beer. This brewery was once one of the biggest in Belgium and an early adopter of steam power, which was transferred throughout the brewery by an ingenious network of shafts and belts.
Hendrik has done a fantastic job of keeping the history of this place alive and the massive renovation project is well on its way. Stacks of wooden beer boxes hand-lettered with their contents and giant wooden aging barrels adorn the space. The massive wooden and metal wheels that drove the belts powering the brewery operations are still in place on their sturdy iron shafts that penetrate the thick walls. It is a uniquely interesting place and we couldn’t believe that we had the chance to paint a mural on one of its old brick walls.
Photo inspiration for the background of the mural.
Old Feys beer boxes.
Inspirations for the boxes on the mural.
After getting a tour of the brewery and settling in a bit, we put the finishing touches on the design incorporating some inspiration from the brewery tour. Then we got to work on the wall: a brick facade facing the courtyard where the malting towers resided. It was a highly visible spot and the stepped gables at the height of the wall added to the Belgian charm. Hendrik had installed three levels of scaffolding, which the boys had fun monkeying around on. Now it was time to mix up the paint.
The wall and the boys, primed and ready.
The courtyard view from the wall.
We worked with high-quality, thick and rich mural paints in Minnesota. We knew exactly what we were getting there and still spent hours mixing the paints to get the perfect color. One thing we learned from mixing paint in Belgium: paint is not equal everywhere. The colors we gave Hendrik in English were then translated into Dutch and given to the local paint store. The colors we ended up with were quite a bit different from what we envisioned but we had to make do. Adapt! We struggled through the mixing process but finally arrived at a set that we were content with. Time to slap some paint on these bricks.
Mixing some odd colored paint.
Our design features a proud brewer, his foot atop a stack of five “Feys” wooden beer boxes and his hand on a traditional Belgian brewing paddle. The five boxes symbolized the five generations of brewers who worked there from 1898-1967. Behind the brewer, we placed two large wheels mounted on iron shafts with belts draped between them. This showed the innovative industrialization that Feys Brewery implemented in the early 1900s and also served as a lovely visual element, drawing the eye around the design.
The mural mock up.
Painting on brick is taxing work, but we found our groove with it and also found a way to use the texture of the bricks to enhance the design. The boys helped us lay in the background and took part in the whole process more than they ever had. After four long days jamming brushes into cracks between the bricks and climbing up and down the towering scaffolding, we were ready to put the final touches on.
The Voorhees Painting Crew
The whole family
helping lay in the background.
Painting with
the boys.
The entire complex is set up as a shared living/work space and volunteers do much of the work in exchange for food and accommodations. While it is not necessarily set up to host families, Hendrik made a great effort to make us feel comfortable. As for the accommodations: Europe is notorious for not having air conditioning. We were given our own house to stay in which was spacious but rustic and the rooms lacked any airflow when the windows were closed which we couldn’t keep open at night because of the bugs. The warm, stuffy nights made for a lack of good sleep so we finished the mural quickly so we could move on to cooler climes.
Hendrik and the other workers joined us for the last few strokes and we all pitched in to carefully disassemble the scaffolding in order to get our first unobstructed view of the finished piece. As we stood back in awe at the transformation of this humble brick wall, some eyes got teary and we all joined together for a group photo. It was a magnificently surreal moment and we capped it off with a trip to a Belgian fry shop (do you know french fries were invented in Belgium?). The Belgian beer never tasted so good.
Finished! As you can see, we continued the mural on to the small wall to the right.
The Belgian Brewer close up.
The paddle
Forte Brune Beer: brewed at Feys when operating.
Five generations of Feys.
The mural next to the old brewery.
The whole crew waiting for our order of Belgian fries.
Orin with the fry guy.
Since we finished rather quickly, we were able to move on to charming Brugges, Belgium where we had a lovely time walking the streets and sampling the delicious Belgian fare (their chocolate is INCREDIBLE). We returned to Paris in time to fall in love with the city all over again before hopping on a jet plane back to Chicago.
A quaint boat tour in Brugge. Ivan is in the ‘make a face for all photos’ phase.
On top of the Eiffel Tower. We waited for hours so we’re pretty stoked we made it.
Was it all worth it? You bet your big toe it was. It was hard and uncomfortable at times but also strewn with a thousand beautiful little moments and a lot of laughs together as a family. Yes, the schedule that we sometimes create is absolutely bonkers and we often wonder if we have a problem. But it usually turns out well in the end and we live to see another day where we get another random email from some fella who had a bag of mini-donuts and got a bright idea or Ashley dug too deep into the interwebs for mural opportunities. That’s the kind of stuff we live for. That’s the meat of our life sandwich.
Thank you for coming along with our family of sandwich artists on our adventures in art. God bless it all.