Walt's Grill

ARTIST'S STATEMENT- Walt's Grill

The geometric mural on Walt's Grill was painted in the mid '90s. We had been painting murals for a number of years, so I don't remember exactly what year it was. By then, though, I had a huge assortment of left over paints from previous projects.

Just as every other year, I wanted to employ a different type of art and "borrow" from a different style and culture. I decided to use a folk art form not traditionally regarded very highly: quilting.

This approach allowed me to create an abstraction (which I hadn't painted many of). It allowed me to make an (albeit mild) feminist point about art, (who is considered an artist, and why?). It also allowed me to be an ecologically responsible citizen and use all my leftover paint.

I usually related to the students more like an orchestra conductor than an art teacher. I gave them lots of structure and expected them to "Do it my way."

With this design the students could pick the colors they wanted, or mix colors if they felt like it. They could put them (more or less) wherever they chose. Everybody could feel confident about painting simple squares. Our method was very much like some traditional quilting projects! The volunteers had loads of fun, and I got to relax more than usual.

RBC Centura parking lot

RBC Centura parking lot, by corner of Columbia and Rosemary Streets

ARTIST'S STATEMENT- RBC Centura parking lot, by corner of Columbia and Rosemary Streets

The turtle mural on Columbia Street, across from the homeless shelter was painted in 1993. Over the years lots of people have asked me, "Why turtles?"

There are a number of reasons: First in my youth, I used to keep pet turtles, soemtimes dozens at a time. I still just love them.

Another reason was that one of my elementary school teachers back in 1963 told me that during the age of the dinosaurs we here in Chapel Hill were under water. As a kid I enjoyed walking around "Up town" and imagining dinosaurs swimming past the planetarium. Maybe one still lived, I thought, in the UNC steam tunnel.

Third, I had asked the design review board if I could paint a dinosaur the year before. But they said, "No!" I asked them this because I had a lot of young volunteers helping paint that year and I thought they might be inspired just as I was. Since I knew that turtles have been around since the dingo-days a year later I suggested a sea turtle.

They said, "Yes!" and I got to paint my dinosaur after all.

Finally, at that point I had been painting murals full time for four years, and I was hearing a lot about an artist who went around the country painting whales. I was getting pretty tired of it. I had seen some of them and felt I could produce as good or better a painting than this nationally famous fellow was doing. Yes, there is some truth in the phrase "artistic ego," because I think I did.

Pantana Bob's

Pantana Bob's

Pantana Bob's

Pantana Bob's

Pantana Bob's

ARTIST'S STATEMENT- Pantana Bob's, 305 West Rosemary Street

My last annual downtown mural was painted in 2003. It is on Pantana Bob's bar and restaurant facing Rosemary Street. The painting shows a number of young student volunteers working on a mural of huge football players. They are using a "Paint by Numbers" method.

These "painted painters" are about halfway through their project, so the mural becomes a painting about making a painting. I think it is a nice tribute to all the school kids who have helped me each spring for 18 years.

I must have somehow sensed that this might be the last mural. The painted painters will never finish their mural, and I didn't want my program to be finished either. The Downtown Commission (which sponsored most of my activity in town) was soon afterward re-organized as the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership. We have not yet found a way to resume the mural program. We are however, beginning to work along with the historic preservation folks on the upkeep of some of the older murals.

I have always wanted to paint a colossus (a giant). When I finally got my chance the wall I was given was the wrong shape. I decided to paint football players in a crouch so my giants would fit. Although I do not follow Carolina football as closely as many people, I feel an unusual sense of loyalty to the program. As a kid I made almost all my income selling sodas and programs at the stadium, or by babysitting for people going to the game. I've even played football in Kenan (a hole in the fence; lucky we didn't get caught).

I like all the different numbers in the picture. Numbers on the jerseys, numbers on the field, numbers in the grid the painters are using to lay out the mural, numbers in their paint by numbers drawing. All those different uses of numbers seemed to blur the distinction between different realms of endeavor in a way that I found philosophically very satisfying.

Syd's Hair Shop

ARTIST'S STATEMENT- Syd's Hair Shop, 108 West Rosemary Street

In 2002 I designed a mural for the side of Syd’s Hair Shop. It depicts a great number of world globes floating, molecule like, in space. I hadn’t painted any murals in the surrealist vein yet and since I liked to change my style every year, it seemed about time.

At that point, “Public Art” had become a reality here in town. This was thanks largely to the efforts of the Public Art Commission, founded by Nancy Preston. In 2002, the commission was promoting the Percent for Art program so the questions that always surround public art were in the news, and on my mind. I enjoy most public art, but sometimes it seems that in the interests of accessibility and acceptability, the citizen- committees choose artworks that use very common symbols in very direct ways. This is the approach a political cartoonist uses. Also, in modern public art (as in a good bit of recent art in general) the artist often functions as the idea person or as a sort of art director. Technicians actually make the work.

I became interested to see what sort of meaning I could convey using a very common symbol (the earth). This symbol has many varied meanings for different people, In designing the mural I multiplied the symbol, then varied the scale and syncopated the pattern to create a spacial context (Outer space in this case). I then turned the design over to my assistant (Scott Nurkin, a very good painter himself). He and student volunteers painted the whole thing.

What possible meanings resulted? I wanted many, f or all viewers. For me the image raises some old philosophical questions: How much does each of us carry our entire world around inside our own head? How much of our world comes from outside of us? How much of our perception is created by a common culture? I never try to answer these questions, but it seems good to raise them with yourself once in a while.

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.

Studio Supply

Studio Supply

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.

Studio Supply

Chapel Hill Cleaners

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.

Mansion 460

Mansion 460

Mansion 460

Mansion 460, 460 West Franklin Street

Former University Chrysler building

Former University Chrysler building

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.

Public parking lot by 411 West Restaurant, Former University Chrysler building

Goldie's Grill, public parking lot

Goldie's Grill, public parking lot

Goldie's Grill, public parking lot

Goldie's Grill, public parking lot

ARTIST'S STATEMENT- Goldie's Grill
Public parking lot, corner of Rosemary and Columbia Streets

This mural depicts downtown pedestrians viewed from above. It creates the illusion that the viewer is looking down or that the pedestrians are walking up a wall. I was inspired by all the trouble and protest we had in town when N. C. N. B. first proposed this building. The idea of a 6 storey building on Franklin Street drove people right up the wall. Citizens even floated balloons to that height so folks could get a feel for how tall the building would be. It is of course on that building that the mural was painted in 1996.
The head of the Downtown Commission, Robert Humphries, was having a hard time finding a building owner to lend us a wall for that spring. I try to make the murals site specific but since we had no site, I had no idea and no proposal sketch. Without those things Robert was having a hard time getting donations, too. The mural was supposed to be the centerpiece of a local arts festival and our deadlines were looming. He finally got a building, but only a week before the festival. With no time to spare Robert and I had to cut through a lot of red tape to get the mural started on time. The main benefit of such a mural, with it’s flexible composition, was that I could paint while Robert did fundraising, Every time he got a donation I added more people to the mural.

public parking lot, Rosemary and Columbia Streets

Public parking lot, Rosemary and Columbia Streets

ARTIST'S STATEMENT- Public parking lot, corner of Rosemary and Columbia Streets

The first mural I painted in Chapel Hill was the blue mural, which can be seen from the corner of Rosemary and Columbia streets. It was painted in 1989.

It was the brainchild of Phyllis Lotchin. Phyllis (with the help of the Downtown Commission) was creating a downtown arts festival to showcase work and performances by public school students. The idea appealed to me because I am a product of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro system, and also because the idea was similar to our original intent in starting the Apple Chill Fair.

I was hired for the project because I had some art experience, also because I had taught elementary and secondary art, so I was used to working with kids. I was used to working with volunteers, too (actors making their own sets off-off Broadway). Finally, I had run a small part-time house painting business while in college, so I knew how to work with large amounts of paint.

With lots of input from the committee, I must have done 50 drawings for this mural. We were all eager for this first (and maybe only) one to be popular and not controversial. I hit on the final idea of a night scene when I remembered riding my bike up to work in the wee hours (as a dishwasher at Ye Olde Waffle Shoppe), How beautiful Franklin Street seemed when it was quiet and deserted in the moonlight!

I chose the pointillist style because it was a rough brick wall. Also, I had so many volunteers that I was afraid I could not supervise them all adequately. I thought if they all had the same size brush and were all instructed to make the same size blue mark, it might unify their contributions into a coherent whole.

Across from Lucy's Restaurant

Across from Lucy's Restaurant

Across from Lucy's Restaurant

ARTIST'S STATEMENT- Across from Lucy's Restaurant, 114 Henderson Street

Henderson Street’s big pencil was painted in 1991. Since I was given a long low retaining wall to work with I tried to draw a plan that would fit that space. After many failures I hit on the idea of a giant 100-foot long chameleon. Since chameleons change color it was an opportunity to use lots of color and have fun with the patterns in the scales. I figured that my student assistants would probably enjoy painting a giant animal, too.

At that time the Appearance Commission was the body that regulated and approved things like signage. I submitted my idea for a “courtesy review” but they were adamantly opposed to it. They thought it might frighten children. They also felt it was an un-dignified image to have so close to a church. Irritated with them I went back to the drawing board but nothing seemed to be working. I threw down my pencil in disgust. It rolled across the table and stopped on the plans.

Eureka! I had (chameleon like) been changing styles every year but never thought to try Pop Art. A giant pop art style pencil would certainly fit the space well. It seemed to fit the neighborhood well too; the post office, the courthouse and the university all being right there. Most pencils have words on them, so I drew in the partial saying, “Is mightier than the sword.” Now the idea even seemed to fit better with the nearby church.

The reason the lettering is upside down is that on most pencils the words appear right side up to right handed users but upside down to left handed users. The Appearance Commission did not permit any billboards in Chapel Hill and I thought they might actually be able to regulate my project as a sign if my letters were right side up so I painted the lettering upside down. It is a pencil as a lefty would see it. That way it fit better with the whole town.

Porthole Alley

Porthole Alley

Porthole Alley

Porthole Alley

Porthole Alley

Porthole Alley