The “canvas” of the Dallas County Freedom Rock has been in Minburn for more than a year, and this week the painting has begun and is progressing quickly.

The artwork, commissioned by the Minburn American Legion, Post 99 and painted by Greenfield artist Ray “Bubba” Sorensen, features a unique representation of the U.S. military, paying tribute to the armed forces that originated from the County. For Dallas, Sorensen decided on the Wilson Brothers from Perry on the south face, and Nile Kinnick and Bob Feller from Adel and Van Meter, respectively, on the north side. Sorensen told Raccoon Valley Radio that the process of painting the Freedom Rocks can be challenging, and that starts with selecting the subjects for the mural.

“There’s a few different aspects to the difficulty, because first of all there’s so many deserving subjects. You know, there’s so many people from here, so many deserving veterans and stories. It came down to trying to figure out what would best say ‘Dallas County, Iowa.’ So that can be a challenge, and then of course the surface. There’s rough places, there’s places where you try to move the artwork out of that rough area. But then sometimes, if you’re going to have any kind of mural that makes sense you just have to deal with, ‘Okay, we’re going to have to paint something over this bulging, rough, or depressed area.’ So that’s the other challenge.”

Sorensen expects to be finished with the rock by Thursday or Friday. After that, the American Legion will work on the landscaping of the grounds around the artwork, which is expected to cost an additional $13,000 on top of the artist’s fee. Sorensen adds, it’s been difficult this year to tackle all the projects he’s been commissioned for, as he spent the first four months in the State Legislature as the Representative for House District 20.