ARTICLE PROFILES PARKWAY QUARTER DESIGNER FRANK MORRIS

Even though he's a big-time artist with gigs for the U.S. Mint, designing commemorative U.S. Marshall's coins and Congressional Medals of Honor, there's still something that makes Frank Morris feel like a little kid again.

That would be riding through the tunnels on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Fitting then that Morris, an artist, designer and illustrator who lives in Memphis, Tennessee, was chosen by the U.S. Mint to create the design for the new Blue Ridge Parkway America the Beautiful Quarter, which will be unveiled in a Parkway Quarter Launch and Coin Exchange Thursday in downtown's Pack Square Park.

Festivities at the Quarter Launch will include music by Grammy winner David Holt, Blue Ridge Parkway rangers, who will have park activities for children, and every child in attendance younger than 18 will receive a free quarter and U.S. Mint coin box, said Leesa Brandon, parkway spokeswoman. Also attending will be Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, David Croft, associate director of manufacturing for U.S. Mint, and Parkway Superintendent Mark Woods.

Morris' design, which was engraved by Joseph Menna, depicts the image of leaving one parkway tunnel as you enter another, along the graceful curvature of the parkway hugging a mountainside, and framed by the state flower, the dogwood.

"When the assignment came up, I was delighted because I had just traveled the entire parkway," Morris said. "I had the pleasure of driving from New York City down to D.C. and Shenandoah National Park and took the Parkway from there."

Morris said 80 percent of designing a new coin is research and brainstorming, because all designs must be historically and architecturally accurate. He came up with 18-20 sketches of different parkway landscapes, one including the Linn Cove Viaduct, which skirts Grandfather Mountain.

But in the end, the tunnels had it.

"As an artist, I appreciate the skill that went in to creating the stone tunnels. Italian and Spanish immigrant stone masons built them. Tunnels bring out the kid in me. I felt connected to them — the intelligent design, the experience of it all."

Morris said his design does not exactly depict any one tunnel on the parkway, but is meant to evoke the general memory of the experience of driving the parkway.

"The biggest challenge is trying to create a really big impact on a tiny quarter. I spend a lot of time designing a theme —to evoke that feeling of coming out of one tunnel and heading into another. It is a collective memory of the tunnels. So many people in so many states move through that environment — the dogwood, two tunnels, coming out of one and going into another. Overlapping that stone section is a way to show the scale. You have to whittle it down to its essence.

"I love that people can look at this coin and remember their experience on the parkway, or it will encourage them to come visit the parkway."

To read the complete article, see:
Parkway quarter designer inspired by tunnel artistry (www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2015/06/23/parkway-quarter-designer-inspired-tunnel-artistry/29175867/)

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