The Summit’s Scott Visitor Center has a new attraction — a giant mural entitled “B-B-Bear!”. Josh Cochran and his assistant Courtney Menard spent a whole week here at The Summit and built an amazing mural showcasing the wide variety of offerings we have here at our Scout Reserve. Here is a little background on Josh.

Josh Cochran grew up in Taiwan and California. He works as an illustrator based in Brooklyn specializing in bright, dense and conceptual drawings. Josh also teaches at the School of Visual Arts and occasionally fills in as an Art Director for the New York Times Op-Ed page. In 2013, his work on Ben Kweller’s “Go Fly A Kite” received a Grammy nomination for Best Limited Edition Packaging. He has a number of side projects, and sometimes exhibits his work in galleries. Josh currently finished his first children’s book published by Templar, “Inside Out: New York” (2014).

While he was here, Gary Hartley had the opportunity to work with Josh and capture some of his amazing artistic abilities on camera. We have uploaded a video time-lapsing the project that started as nothing but a blank white wall. Each day Gary would go and swap out the SD card on the Garmin VIRB and talk a little with Josh about the piece he was working on. Gary asked him for a little bit of a backstory on the mural and this is what Josh had to say.

My Dad was actually a Boy Scout and I grew up as a kid hearing about his backpacking and camping adventures out in the Pacific Northwest. We also heard a lot of somewhat larger than life bear stories right before bedtime. I wanted this mural to try to capture a bit of the adventurous spirit found at the Jamboree as well as some of my own memories of camping and backpacking with my Dad. The painting is meant to be viewed at a couple of different distances. At a further distance, hopefully viewers can try to spot crazy moments scattered throughout like the owl and the fish, or the kid reading a scary book in the tent or the kids waving to each other in the Sustainability Treehouse. Closer viewing, will reveal a lot of the actual texture and some process that went into painting the mural.

You can watch the creation from start to finish in hyper-speed with the video below.  And next time you are here at The Summit be sure to stop by the Scott Visitor Center to check out his amazing work!