Caitlin Clark stands about 21 feet tall at Alice Lloyd College in Knott County, built from roughly 5,000 Post-it notes into a Christmas mural. Eastern Kentucky teacher Tyler Watts spent about a month designing the portrait before he started putting the notes in place. The height was the easy part to describe. The fingers were not.
WYMT reported Thursday that the piece is his 48th sticky-note mural in the ten years since he first tried the form. Watts, a second-grade teacher known as the Post-it Picasso, had the category picked before the player. "I really wanted to do a basketball player," he said. He chose Clark. "This one was tough. This is the hardest one I've ever made."
The Fingers Were the Hard Part
The mural's size gave Watts room to bring details to life. He still identified the small ones as the problem, especially the fingers on Clark's hand. A figure that tall has plenty of wall. A hand made of sticky notes has very little margin.
He was no help to the guessing gallery. Students passing by tried to figure out what the mural would depict, and Watts did not fill in the blank. "I never give anything away," he said. Some students have visited the finished portrait. The season, at least, fits a preference he does not hide. "Christmas is my favorite time of the year," he said.
From a 2016 Experiment to Number 48
WYMT's new report puts his first sticky-note try in his living room in 2016. A 2018 Kentucky.com story said he first used the notes that year for a Statue of Liberty portrait at a library. After 2016, the projects started showing up on school walls.
By October 2018, Watts told Kentucky.com he had produced 12 to 15 Post-it portraits at public schools across the state. That fall, the windows of the Harry M. Caudill Memorial Library in Whitesburg carried Halloween portraits of Pennywise, Jack and Sally, and Jason. A December 2020 WYMT story said those library windows had been his canvas since 2017.
A Muhammad Ali mural in Louisville helped Watts realize he could make portraits of real people. WYMT listed Ali and the Muppets among the earlier creations. This year he wanted a basketball player, and Clark is the one who ended up about 21 feet tall.
Holiday Pictures, Counted in the Thousands
The Christmas theme is not a one-off. Before the 2020 mural of The Muppet Christmas Carol, Watts had done A Charlie Brown Christmas and Mickey's Christmas Carol, WYMT reported at the time. The Muppet piece took more than 10,000 Post-it notes and about two weeks to complete.
Clark's count sits well under that. WYMT put this mural at about 5,000 notes, with a month of design before the notes went up, rather than a two-week finish. LEX18 has quoted Watts saying he can use anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 Post-its on a mural. Five thousand is a middle case on that scale, and it still followed a month of design before the first square went up.
Second Grade Gets the Measurements
The pictures also work as a math lesson for his second-graders. They work on symmetry, area, perimeter and estimation, and he updates them as the murals take shape. The class hears about the picture while it is still becoming one.
On the 2020 library projects, the measuring had a direct job. WYMT said his students helped design the murals and calculated the area and perimeter of the windows to estimate how many notes the picture would need. A guess about area, in that setup, was also a guess about the size of the stack.
The Clark mural went up at Alice Lloyd College rather than in those library windows. His second-graders are still working the ideas WYMT described this week, and he still updates them while a mural takes shape.
The Notes Come From Cynthiana
The Post-it notes Watts uses come from the 3M plant in Cynthiana. WYMT said the plant helps him with the projects, so a mural counted in the thousands is a supply question as well as a drawing one.
He does not yet know what his 50th mural will be. He plans to make it a big one. Number 48 already stands about 21 feet, took a month to design, and used roughly 5,000 notes. Two murals from now, that is the recent standard for big.
