Garzanelli's Restaurant - Sarah Walczynski

Before & After

Expectations

The restaurant has been in business since 1918. It has a long history in the town and people have a good standing relationship with it. When asked what worked well, folks said they wanted good food, a welcoming atmosphere, and a supper club feel. They want an approachable place to bring visiting family, a prom date, and host a special event.

Theme

“Sophisticated Nostalgia” celebrates the area history, shows respect for earlier times, and is a stylish place to build new memories

Color Scheme

Charcoal

Grey

Chestnut

Copper

Sketches and Plans

It started out with a sketch on graph paper from Jeremy. I then converted the layout to a program called Planner5D. I also used a mood board to talk about finishes and concepts.

How the project came about

It is common in the country that there can be many years between visits with neighbors but when there is a catastrophe or a big celebration, you can always count on these people to be there.

Jeremy & David Hillyer reached out to their old friend Sarah (Skerston) Walczynski to help them come up with a design for their project. Sarah has over 25 years in design, training, and project management experience. Her Master’s degree is in Industrial/Organizational Psych and she was a graduate professor of HCI and Human Factors. She then went on to a corporate career in user experience (UX), training, and quality assurance (QA).

More than that, Jeremy liked the previous interior designs that Sarah did and they work well together.

If you like what you see, please give a shout out (or cocktail) to Sarah W!

The story of the murals

Once the centerpiece of the design was to consist of murals that would celebrate the Oglesby location we reached out to the admin of the Oglesby Memories site, Glen Gerrard, and asked him for his help. Wow, was he the right person to contact!

With his background in art and local history he not only was able to find the right images but he lent his expertise to select content to represent the history, people, industry, and natural beauty of the area as well as make sure everything was proportionally pleasing to the eye.

These murals truly are a gift to the town and are a point of pride for the whole area. We hope you bring friends and family by to see this gallery and share the stories that these images have to tell.

If you like what you see, please do a post and give kudos to Glen!

About the mural artist

Glen Gerrard has been an Oglesby resident for most of his life, growing up just down the street from Garzanelli’s since it was called “Pete’s tap” and knew everyone in the family.

He attended Oglesby grade schools and graduated from LaSalle-Peru High School in 1967.

After attending IVCC and serving in the Army, he received a full scholarship in Art and graduated from Illinois State University in 1974.

After living in the mountains of Colorado, he returned to the area in 1978 to work in his studio and restore antiques in his shop.

Glen Gerrard is a board member at Stage 212 and volunteers as docent at the Westclox Museum. In 2018 he received the “Spirit of the Theater” award for his work in the Illinois Valley area. He received the OmniArts Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to the Arts in Illinois in 2019.

He was a Youth Worker at the Detention Home, the Youth Service Bureau in Outreach Crisis Intervention and Community Service, Child Advocate at North Central Behavioral Health, and was a foster parent to 44 kids.