Ice Cream Treat: Du Quoin Man's Art
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[ Jeremy McKinstry follows his imagination, and between the great pieces of art he is creating for all of us he is piling up some great snapshots of his own life.
For instance he lived "next door" to Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh in Junction City, Kansas while serving much of his three year tour in the Army at Ft. Riley, Kansas.
He remembers being asked by the base colonel to paint a kodiak bear coming through the wall in a well-traveled hallway. The kodiak was the base mascot.
Base personnel came and went as he worked on the art, but he was stunned when Col. Colin Powell and a base colonel came up behind him. He turned and was caught off guard by all of the bars and medals on Powell's uniform. He lost his balance and McKinstry's paint brush sprinkled pink paint on the commander's uniform. "I just froze and waited for the MPs (military police) to show up. I knew my life was over," he said. Powell smiled and told McKinstry, "Don't worry about it. I own ALL the uniforms," he said. "I'll get another one."
And, he remembers the tears streaming down the face of a Vietnam veterans who paused to look at a more recent series of murals Mc Kinstry did at the Veterans Administration hospital in Marion. The hospital gave him the leftover paint, which he is using to create great pieces of art for all of us in Du Quoin.
One of his latest is a 1950s vintage soda shop mural in Ye Olde Country Store owned by the Bytner family next to the Grand Theater in downtown Du Quoin. The Norman Rockwell-like mural depicts a Du Quoin constable being served ice cream with three ladies seated around a table off to the side. It just makes you feel good and co-owner Bobbi Bytner said the hundreds of children who come to the ice cream shop for birthday parties (she doesn't charge a rental fee and lets the kids buy whatever they want) think it's great.
The Bytners say their homegrown business has been a success so they purchased the building they previously leased and are adding to the offerings all the time. Bobbi says the mural is perfect for the shop, open from 3:30-9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 3:30 p.m.-10 p.m. Friday, 2-10 on Saturday and 2-9 on Sundays. The shop made over 500 pounds for homemade fudge during the holidays alone.
McKinstry, 34, said he grew up around painters. His grandfather, Mack Stewart was a local painter and he was hooked on art as he watched Rod Lively paint the ornate ceiling of the old balcony in the Grand Theater.
His worst experience was when a nest of brown recluse spiders fell on him when he moved a ceiling tile while working on a project. He wound up in the hospital with 13 bites.
McKinstry studied art at Rend Lake College, but most of his trade is self-taught.
You can also see his 52-foot movie mural in the Grand Theater and a new set of murals in the Du Quoin Rec Center, all of it enriching our lives.