Columbus resident Jeri Cannon has painted a handful of pianos throughout her life, including her personal piano which she has decorated with different colors and patterns.
Longtime Columbus resident Jeri Cannon has always dabbled in some form of art, from painting murals to glass to broken instruments. Her current tune though? Painting pianos.
A resident of Columbus for more than 50 years, Cannon initially worked at Irwin Union Bank for 25 years but has always had some form of art business, even while working at the bank. She used to painted murals for a while before creating a glass stemware painting business that she operated for several years.
In addition to her artistic endeavors, Cannon also plays the violin and piano, and plays the electric violin in the Propeller’s Music Makerspace class. She also paints broken instruments including violins and cellos, but has also painted a handful of pianos over the years, with her painting her first one in the 1980s.
“Since then, I hadn’t painted any until I got my current little piano, given to me by a neighbor, and it had sat in a garage for years and it was a typical story for pianos. Pianos are big and heavy and people don’t want them anymore, they get stuck in garages and barns and they rot away,” Cannon said. “People want electric pianos or keyboards these days for obvious reasons, and I think pianos are gorgeous and they’re getting neglected…”
Now painting pianos is her current favorite thing to do, she said. What was once a solid brown piano now displays blues, purples, yellows and pinks, along with patterns like spirals and stripes. The bottom panel now illustrates a blue sky dotted with white clouds and outlines of birds. Two sets of fingers with nails painted blue rest on the keys.
“One of my favorite things I like to do in art is… I call it just doodling. I just do all kinds of different designs,” Cannon said. “I sometimes have a theme and sometimes I just have maybe a color scheme, but that one I just doodled and did whatever I wanted to do for myself.”
Because she had so much fun painting that one, Cannon said she began searching for another piano to paint. During a conversation with Diane Doup of YES Cinema, she asked if the cinema would be interested in a piano and if they would like her to paint it for them. After finding out they had a piano they could get for free, Cannon went to work painting it and it now is in the cinema’s conference center.
“And YES Cinema, I tried to use their logo colors and different things… out of the YES Cinema itself, like some signage and they do Coke products, so I did a Coke on it and popcorn and stuff like that,” Cannon said. “So, that’s what I did there, but I could just see all kinds of pianos, like a pizza piano. There’s a new pickle place coming to town, I’d love to paint a pickle piano for them for them to put in their lobby.”
Not only would Cannon love to paint more pianos for other places if they are interested, she would also love to see more locations include pianos in restaurants or lobbies. She believes pianos are a lost art because of their size and weight, but also believes they are very fun and anyone can come up and play them.
“… I know 4th Street, way, way back when they first opened which was a long, long time ago, they had a piano, an old upright, and people had fun. They just would go in and if you played, you could just sit down and play a song,” Cannon said. “And I just think… pianos are something that are going by the wayside, getting wasted and I just hate to see that because they’re so beautiful.”
