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Laura Shmania  > Southern Part of Heaven > Murals by Michael Brown
These murals have been painted by Michael Brown over the last 20 years. Weather, age, and the urban environment have taken their toll on these once colorful and vibrant murals. The Preservation Society of Chapel Hill, the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership, and the Chapel Hill Historical Society have launched a campaign to preserve them.

In this gallery the first photo will have the artist's statement and will show the whole mural: the photos that follow are more detailed. Click on each photo for a larger view. To read Michael Brown's description of his creative process, find the photos with "ARTIST'S STATEMENT " in the text. Michael's description is used in this gallery with permission from both Michael Brown and The Chapel Hill News.

I have arranged the photos in this gallery as a walking tour that revolves around two public parking lots- the one by 411 West Franklin Street and the one on the corner of Rosemary and Columbia Streets. I hope you will take a stroll through town to see the murals!

These photos are copyright Laura Shmania-- all rights reserved. Please do not use these images without my written permission. Contact me at :: LShmania@mindspring.com
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Laura Shmania > Mural artist Michael Brown
Mural artist Michael Brown
Laura Shmania > Public parking lot by 411 West Restaurant, Former University Chrysler building
Public parking lot by 411 West Restaurant, Former University Chrysler ...
Laura Shmania > ARTIST'S STATEMENT- Former University Chrysler building The series of tree murals on the old Plymouth dealership was painted in 1992. I had only done 2 murals in town and this third one was to be my largest and most ambitious to date. The first thing I had to do is convince Mr. Yates to let me do it on his building. He was not at all enthusiastic and finally I told him I’d buy a car from him if he would let me paint the mural. (My old car was on it’s last legs anyway, so why not?) A town parking lot abuts the building and tightly squeezed in between the lot and my wall were a few raggedly spaced Lombardi poplar trees. The head of the town landscaping department was eager to help. He did not like Lombardi poplars at all. “Weed trees,” he said. “We’ll be glad to cut ‘em all down, get them out of your way.” To me however, Lombardi’s are elegantly tall and they sway gracefully even in a light breeze. They are one of my favorite trees. I decided right then to design a mural that would work with the trees rather than have them removed. Doggerel though it may be, Joyce Kilmer was right about poems and trees, and the same goes for murals, too. That’s why I painted all those different views of trees, composed with that unusual syncopated spacing. I needed a subject that I could successfully weave among the real poplars. It did lead to some problems, though. There was no way to set up a steady ladder in the places where the trees brushed up against the wall . I had to climb the trees to paint behind them. The poplars are all gone now, just recently cut down. Mr. Yates has passed away and he never did get his roof fixed, so the center of the mural has mostly peeled off. The dealership is closed for good and the building is slated for demolition. Still, these paintings remain some of my favorites. It’s the only time I ever climbed a tree to paint a mural.
ARTIST'S STATEMENT- Former University Chrysler building The series ...
Laura Shmania > Former University Chrysler building
Former University Chrysler building
Laura Shmania > Former University Chrysler building
Former University Chrysler building
Laura Shmania > ARTIST'S STATEMENT- Studio Supply, 421 West Franklin Street The mural on the side of Studio Supply was one of the last I painted. Each year the Downtown Arts Festival had supplied students from the public schools to help, but by now the festival had lost support and faded from the scene. I hadn’t yet figured out that CHHS students could earn service-learning hours by helping paint. It really seemed that some of the impetus for painting the annual murals had dwindled, so I was glad that the Downtown Commission still wanted to have some artwork done that year. And I was determined to make it something really nice. Since the actual young artists and performers were no longer appearing downtown I decided to commemorate their many past years of effort in the new mural. Also, since I was now working on my own it seemed like an opportunity to do something more artistically challenging and show off a bit. To me nothing is more difficult than to draw the human figure and within that context musician’s hands, faces and postures are even tougher to draw, so I decided to paint musicians. I used a photo of a neighbor as the model for the teen- age girl playing the flute and dug out an old transparency from my picture files for the model of the boy playing the fiddle. By flipping the transparency of the boy I achieved what I thought was a nice composition in the proposal sketch, When the time to paint came it was, as I expected, quite difficult to do and at the end I was glad to be putting on the finishing touches. A man walked by. “You know,” he said, “I play the violin and that boy is playing backward. There are no left handed violins.” When I had flipped the transparency to set up the composition I had accidentally made an impossible left-handed violin. I took a while to think it over, decided it was just too embarrassing to leave up, and spent a number of days painting a new boy, with a correctly held violin, right over the first.
ARTIST'S STATEMENT- Studio Supply, 421 West Franklin Street The mur ...
Laura Shmania > Studio Supply
Studio Supply
Laura Shmania > Studio Supply
Studio Supply
Laura Shmania > Studio Supply
Studio Supply
Laura Shmania > Murals by Michael Brown photo
 
Laura Shmania > Murals by Michael Brown photo
 
Laura Shmania > ARTIST'S STATEMENT- Chapel Hill Cleaners, 422 West Franklin Street The handprints mural, on West Franklin Street, was painted in 1990. It is on the Chapel Hill Cleaners. I wanted to do something much different from the first one (which had been representational). I figured if I repeated myself Chapel Hill might get pretty bored with murals in a hurry. So I decided I should do something abstract and process oriented. I also had a number of elementary school-age volunteers that I needed to keep entertained for a whole Saturday. I was struggling for an idea when an old childhood memory came to me. I used to enjoy walking past Sloan's Drug Store because you could still see some faded Carolina blue hand prints put there by students after Carolina's 1957 National Championship win. Eureka! Even a first grader can make a handprint. At that time, the cleaners was owned by Robert Humphries. (He and I went on to form a close association, and I feel that he deserves at least as much credit as I do for all these murals.) I ran the idea past Robert. He thought it was pretty darn funny that in his business he spent all day trying to get smudges and handprints out, and I was proposing putting them all over his building! I used handprints of about 50 kids, and some of their parents to paint the mural. By the time it was nearly done I was acting like the Chapel Hill version of Tom Sawyer. I got numerous passers by, some town officials, a prominent musician, all to make their mark. I even got one Carolina basketball player. You'd be surprised how hard it is to talk some people into dipping their hands in a bucket of paint. I'm really glad I talked him into it, though, because it seemed to bring the mural full circle.
ARTIST'S STATEMENT- Chapel Hill Cleaners, 422 West Franklin Street ...
Laura Shmania > Chapel Hill Cleaners
Chapel Hill Cleaners
Laura Shmania > ARTIST'S STATEMENT- Patio Loco, across from Chapel Hill Cleaners, West Franklin Street In 2001 when Patio Loco moved into their building it was looking very badly run down. The new restaurateurs decided to keep the look, sort of like a rough neighborhood in Bogotá. This was meant to create an air of authenticity, but it also created an appearance problem for that whole section of Franklin Street. As a solution I proposed a mural on their façade. The mural that the owners vividly envisioned was a scene of Colombian women in traditional costume selling native dishes out of makeshift stalls in the barrio. They felt this would go with their current look! Nice concept, but not at all what the Downtown Commission or the neighboring businesses were hoping to fund. The new owners however, were adamant. I explained that if I painted that scene, then every merchant I ever approached would want a business related mural. I did not really want my efforts to devolve into a free billboard program. I also pointed out that their current idea came darn close to being a picture of their product. Our local sign regulations strictly forbid that. It was very likely that if we did paint it the mural would be deemed an illegal sign by the town. The restaurant would be forced to cover it over or be closed down. If I could find something very Colombian, but not having anything to do with food, that might be acceptable to everyone. Knowing how popular the giant turtle mural had been I hit on the idea of painting some huge cheerfully colored tropical birds (ostensibly from the headwaters of the Amazon). That idea got an enthusiastic “Yes,” from every body and so thats what we did. I was the only one that had a problem with it. I had prided myself on taking a different artistic approach to each mural for 16 years but a giant animal is a giant animal after all, whether it is turtle or parrot. My consolation was that although I had arrived at the same artistic solution, it was a full decade later and had arrived there for entirely different reasons.
ARTIST'S STATEMENT- Patio Loco, across from Chapel Hill Cleaners, West ...
Laura Shmania > Mansion 460, 460 West Franklin Street
Mansion 460, 460 West Franklin Street
Laura Shmania > Mansion 460
Mansion 460
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