Days after the conservative commentator’s assassination, Erica Arndts transformed a barn into a tribute to him.
WAYNESVILLE, Ohio–On the same day that around 90,000 people gathered in Arizona for Charlie Kirk’s memorial service, a crowd of 1,000 ventured to this south Dayton suburb for a vigil and to see an expansive barnside mural honoring the slain conservative commentator.
The artist, Erica Arndts, travels around the country and the world as a muralist commissioned to transform blank spaces on the sides of buildings into pieces of art that capture local history and pivotal moments in time.
When she is not traveling, she spends half her time in her native Centerville, near where she painted the Kirk mural, and the other half in the north Georgia mountains.
When Kirk was assassinated on Sept. 10, Arndts watched the coverage from her north Georgia home and felt compelled to paint a mural. To bring her vision to life, she took to social media, asking if anyone had a building with a large surface.
Her request caught the attention of Jeffrey Heil, owner of an irrigation and landscaping company, who has a five-acre property with a 120-by-12-foot metal barn on the corner of a high-traffic intersection between Centerville and Waynesville, Ohio.
Heil’s girlfriend, Danielle, went to high school with Arndts, and when she reached out with an offer of the barn, her former classmate accepted.
Things moved quickly after that.
Kirk had died on a Wednesday. Arndts and Heil connected two days later, and Arndts started transforming a blank barnside canvas that Sunday, Sept. 14. It took her four days to complete the project by hand.
Photos of the mural’s daily progress, and the finished product, were shared hundreds of thousands of times on Facebook alone. The vigil was organized for Sept. 21, the same day as Kirk’s memorial service.
Like the memorial service, the barnside event was reflective of a church service with prayers and testimonies.
As large groups of flag-waving people streamed onto his property, wearing attire adorned with images of Kirk, Heil admitted that he was not familiar with the conservative influencer until his assassination.
“I’ve been so focused on my life—my business, my family, and everything else that occupies our time. Just as it has done for many people across the country, this has awakened me from my own apathy and made me realize that it’s important we each contribute to our communities in our own way,” Heil told The Epoch Times.
