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
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
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.
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 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.
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.