ARTIST'S STATEMENT- Porthole Alley, by the Carolina Coffee Shop

The parade mural in the porthole alley was painted in 1997. I was inspired by the wood carvings of a circus parade that used to be in a campus soda fountain called the Circus Room. It was near the old UNC baseball diamond (Davis Library now). As a kid I used to walk on campus to get a cherry Coke at the fountain and watch baseball. I was very impressed by those fine carvings. I learned much later that the carver, Carl Boettcher, had derived his ideas from some William Mead Prince artwork. Prince had drawn a sort of Beat Dook parade to use in his book, The Southern Part of Heaven, an idealized memoir of his boyhood in Chapel Hill.

I liked the idea of a parade mural since that alley had a constant parade of interesting characters going to and from campus. I also liked the idea of a parade because an alley gives mural viewer very little “viewing distance”. By having a lot of detail (as in a parade) I could give the audience something to look at even if they could not see the whole picture at once. It was especially fun for me that the audience for the parade was actually moving while the parade was standing still. The effect of a parade passing by was still created.

Since the UNC carvings and a nationally prominent local artist inspired the mural, and since I myself had a Chapel Hill boyhood, the idea seemed to have a proper pedigree and loads of source material. Since the mural was to be was so near the University I figured that couldn’t hurt. That is also why I made it resemble a drawing, since the original “source material” was a drawing (also we didn’t have enough money for color). All of the different objects and characters in the parade gave me a chance to use symbolism and tell a lot of visual inside jokes on both town and gown, draw caricatures of friends and include suggestions from passers by.

One day I would like to paint an audience for the parade on the opposite wall. Then the work would be complete

Porthole Alley

Porthole Alley

Parade mural seen from Franklin Street

Carolina Coffee Shop, 138 East Franklin Street

Puzzle pieces - one of the many puzzle pieces scattered through town!

Varsity Theatre alleyway

Varsity Theatre alleyway

ARTIST'S STATEMENT- Varsity Theatre alleyway, Franklin Street

In 1999 the Varsity Theatre alley was becoming a problem area for downtown. Since pedestrians there are largely hidden from public view, it was an attractive place for young “Taggers” to paint graffiti and a lot of it was building up there. However, the taggers had almost always left my murals alone so we thought a mural in there might help.

The location had some real problems though. There were many square feet to fill and, as usual, a tight budget. The student volunteers had to be given something they could execute at any skill level. The alley is narrow and the viewing distance minimal so standing between the opposing walls was extremely claustrophobic.

I decided to paint blue sky on the walls. A sky painting would seem to open up the cramped space. Sky is easy and inexpensive to do, and the volunteers could easily paint clouds. When I realized that this plan would mean painting a Carolina blue and white mural I decided to change the plan and paint one of the walls (on the Durham side of the alley) a dark “Duke” blue. That would make that side into a night sky. With this the painting then became a sort of a Ying –Yang mural, containing Day and night, Carolina and Duke. In order to emphasize the concept of interrelatedness I painted an interlocking jigsaw puzzle piece pattern over the entire mural.

I also liked the idea of pairing a normally small thing like a puzzle with a huge thing, like the sky. To further develop the idea I instructed my assistants to paint puzzle pieces on buildings all over town, like scattered random pieces that had not been fitted into the puzzle yet. To this day I’m not sure where they all are. I do know that from the most constricted location I ever worked came the largest project I ever did, covering the whole town.

The Cave

ARTIST'S STATEMENT- The Cave, Wallace Parking Deck

A year after the Wallace Parking Deck was built on Rosemary Street I got a call from Cal Horton, the town manager. The deck was a beautiful new facility. Unfortunately, many townspeople were not comfortable with it yet and it wasn’t being used any where near capacity. Cal told me that one of the reasons people were giving for avoiding it was that it seemed dark and cavernous. He asked,” Can you do anything to make it feel less like a cave?”

The instant he said the word “cave” a brainstorm hit me. I would not try to make the parking deck seem less like a cave at all. Instead, I’d try to make the deck seem more like a cave. The idea was to fill the parking deck with murals that resembled the prehistoric cave paintings found at Lascaux, in France. Since examples of cave paintings have been discovered all over the world I also borrowed ideas from other ancient cultures . They all show what life might have been like for a mythical tribe of my invention. Long forgotten artists from Africa to Alaska contributed (so did a bunch of local volunteers) . The murals show aspects of life ranging from hunting and gathering to childcare and games; things we also concern ourselves with today.

I got another idea from different ancient source, Trajan’s Column in Rome. The sculpted reliefs that spiral around it tell of the Emperor’s years of conquest. Since parking decks also have a spiral structure I thought it might work to tell the story of my imaginary nomadic people as they moved through the cycle of their year.

By putting the murals in the light wells I tried to draw attention to the fact that this really was a very well designed facility. The truth is I didn’t think the parking deck was lightless and dank at all and I liked my cave idea primarily because it made fun of the situation. I’ve always enjoyed telling this story too, because it is an example of solving a problem by making light of it.

Amber Alley and Cave

Amber Alley

Amber Alley

Amber Alley

Amber Alley

Amber Alley

ARTIST'S STATEMENT- Amber Alley - by the Rathskellar Restaurant

The mural at the back of the Amber Alley was painted in 1999. It was called Amber Alley because Theodor Danziger used yellow light bulbs down there to create a romantic “Old quarter/ European” atmosphere outside his Rathskeller restaurant. I remember the yellow light bulbs vividly. I’d eaten there when I was seven years old and, having never eaten in a place with “atmosphere” before, it made quite an impression.

Each year the director of the Downtown Commission (Robert Humphries) would propose a mural location to me, and nearly every year he would first suggest the back of the Amber Alley. The alley was a big problem area for him. Walking from the parking deck the main entrance to Franklin Street was through the alley. It was hard to find, dirty, and with all of its broken windows, crumbling bricks and collapsing ductwork, it looked like an abandoned construction site. I often get jobs because a mural is the only solution for a wall that is just to ugly or expensive to fix, but I had no idea how to deal with all that junk, so year after year I would turn Robert down.

My son was eight, and interested in dinosaurs, so one night we rented the movie Jurassic Park, in which dinosaur DNA is extracted from amber. That is when the idea came to me. A giant amber necklace would certainly be appropriate for the Amber Alley. I could twist it around all the doors, windows and other obstacles and in that way also lead pedestrian’s eyes right down to the alley entrance and hence to Franklin Street. I could imbed symbols of Chapel Hill in the amber, like insects are imbedded in real amber. I included among them a caricature of Dean Smith (he had retired that year, and no I was not implying he was a dinosaur) and a picture of the discontinued downtown trolley service.

Much like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park I read recently that we may revive the trolley, now running on Bio-diesel, instead of fossil fuel. I hope we can revive some of my work, too.

Mural restoration project of the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill

Mural restoration project of the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill

Michael Brown, restoring the mural as part of the mural restoration project of the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill.

Newly improved! Mural restoration project of the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill

Newly improved! Mural restoration project of the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill

Mural restoration project of the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill

Mural restoration project of the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill

Micahel Brown and the mural restoration project of the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill

Mural artist Michael Brown

Mural artist Michael Brown