After 5: A Real Motion Picture

There's some buzz around the Campbell 16 Ciné, and it has nothing to do with a movie premiere, a Brad Pitt homecoming or new digital projectors.

Springfield artist Susan Sommer-Luarca is drawing a crowd to view her mural in progress on the theater building's west wall, facing Campbell Avenue. About 50 Springfield Catholic elementary students and a nursing home group visited the site last week, and a KY3 reporter and cameraman checked in during the early sketching phase.

Passersby on the heavily traveled street can catch a glimpse of the artist, often perched in a 45-foot boom with her paintbrushes in both hands - Sommer-Luarca is ambidextrous.

"It's always busy," she says, referring to the vehicles that drive down South Campbell Avenue daily. "I've had many people come by. They drive up and drive right back here sometimes. They walk over to me."

Sommer-Luarca intends to redirect the spotlight to her foundation: Susan Sommer-Luarca For Habitat.

"We strive to preserve habitat and wildlife through sharing art and education," she says. "It's a way to get to people and get the message out. I want the murals to be beautiful and enhance the environment."

The scene for this message is 22 stampeding horses in the foreground and another 20 "coming in through the dust," she says. Sommer-Luarca calls the piece "Wild Horses," and it's somewhat shaded by a tree line bordering the highway.

"The horses are stampeding toward the trees here and then split out - like a natural herd would do if they came upon a tree line like this," she says.

The horses rise up to 25 feet on the 30-by-380-foot wall - easily the largest single-sided mural Sommer-Luarca has painted. The only larger murals she's done continued onto ceilings or multiple walls; other works are in Joplin, New York and the Florida Keys.

Under the nonprofit banner, the mural is possible because of sponsors, namely Wehrenberg Theatres, which has partnered with Sommer-Luarca for at least one other theater mural, a St. Louis cinema.

Other sponsors for the Campbell 16 horse mural are Chrishan Park LLC Arabian horse trainers, Sherwin-Williams paints and Fabick CAT equipment rentals.

E.J. Luarca, Sommer-Luarca's manager and husband, says tax-deductible sponsorships, both individual and corporate, are at three levels: a $2,500 bronze, which gets sponsors' names on mural handouts and on the Web, www.ssl4habitat.org; a $5,000 silver, which adds names on banners and recognition as sponsor at all mural locations; and a $10,000 gold, which adds the company logo to the on-site equipment bus and a canvas print of each mural.

Sommer-Luarca has three more murals planned by year's end, including the Wehrenberg cinema in St. Louis. Closer to home, she's putting nature scenes on the wall of Club 220 at Walnut and Patton in downtown Springfield and inside the Greene County Juvenile Detention Center. E.J. Luarca says the foundation is seeking sponsors for all three.

The foundation art is quite a change of pace from the commercial work that's taken her to all three legs of horse racing's Triple Crown, Super Bowl XLII and Beijing for the Olympics - all in the last year.

"The biggest difference is that my heart is in this," the artist says of the wildlife-preservation work. "My heart is in the foundation. No matter where I'm at or what I'm doing, I think about it. This is my passion right here."