Public Art of the Week

Window painting

Olivia Capodilupo is a long way from where she started painting storefront windows. But she jumped right into the local art scene and painted one of the 11 Christmas-themed windows in downtown Lansing. She was among artists who recently worked furiously like Santa’s elves in time for Silver Bells, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary Friday.

Capodilupo, from Gladstone in the Upper Peninsula, moved to Lansing at the end of September. Her window at the Downtown Lansing Inc. headquarters at 112 S. Washington Square depicts a winter woodland scene with a snowman and little critters along with a bonfire.

“It’s a more cute story-book vibe, and it attracted a lot of attention from children while I was painting it,” she said.

Capodilupo began window painting in the U.P., and it took off from there. “It was an untapped market, and I was the only one doing it,” she said.

“When I started it, I had no idea what I was doing. Now I do tutorials online — there’s a lot of tricks,” she said.

In addition to window painting, Capodilupo also does corporate branding, graphic design and illustration work for businesses.

This is the third in the series of holiday window painting coordinated by Bob Rose for Downtown Lansing Inc. Rose likes the ephemeric nature of window painting. As Capodilupo said, “If you don’t like it, you can scrape it right off.”

The new window painting display in downtown Lansing is worth a trip, especially if you have little children, who will appreciate the giant window holiday cards.