A driving trip quickly reveals one of the growing phenomena of our times - town murals. Of course, one doesn’t have to go very far to see the ones in neighboring Ludowici or Helena/McRae.
But in town after town, bigger-than-life scenes depicting the municipality’s history appear on the side wall of a building. In one glance, a visitor knows if this city were born a railroad or a farming town. Closer study reveals the intricacies of establishing community in every sense of the word.
One of the most unique murals I’ve ever seen is in Tiptonville, TN, the entrance to Reelfoot Lake. Upon driving back into town from the campground, we stopped, and not just because we had encountered a stop sign. That town’s mural demands looking at. In fact, we drove into a parking lot just so we could appreciate this work of art.
Spreading across a full with block at least, the scene depicts a day in the life of the town when it sat directly on the banks of the Mississippi River. Like most of the towns on the bluff side of the mighty river, people in Tiptonville eventually moved their community to higher ground after a few floods. But even the stranger sees that the river still flows just beyond below downtown and its mural.
This particular mural must show the buildings as they once were along the flatland and the people as they stopped on the street to chat like they are still wont to do. But the focal point of the painting is the aerial view of the world famous paddle wheeler, the Delta Queen. As always in history, everywhere, the docking of a big boat brought spectators.
For years, this famous passenger vessel has bypassed this small town. But come Halloween of this year, the paddle wheeler will once again stop for its 500 passengers to take a tour of Reelfoot Lake. Prior to departure, the paddle wheeler will provide an almost hour long calliope concert before heading downstream toward Memphis. Townspeople are trying to turn their small community into a regular port of call for the tour ship.
But small towns aren’t the only ones turning to art to enhance their images. Metropolitan areas like Dallas, TX, have picked up the paint brush, too. According to a recent article in Texas Highway Magazine, each stop along DART, the city’s rapid transit system, features scenes of the immediate community. Neighborhood leaders participated in the selection of art and artists. The favorite seems to be the stop for the Dallas Zoo, only a few miles from where I grew up. In addition to murals of the animals, colored mosaic tiles on the platform’s columns look like skin markings of giraffes, leopards, tigers and zebras.
As city planners have learned, real art seems to discourage the graffiti that has plagued the drab environments of so many older mass transit systems. Dallas calls it series of murals, “objects D’Art" and passengers ride these rails just to see the colorful scenes through the windows. They don’t even have to get off at a stop to see these bigger-than-life wall paintings.
But painting isn’t the only fine art making a come back. At least two musicians have mad sizable contributions to encourage young musicians. John Mellencamp not one donated $75,000 worth of instruments to the Detroit School System for its Save the Music Foundation, he went to the first concert to play with the young musicians.
Likewise, Saxophonist Kenny G has made stable donations of his money, instruments and time to the State of New York for the same purpose.
As the whole country wrestles with ways to deter violence, especially among the young, artists in all venues are stepping forward to offer their expertise. They know from their own experiences that when people learn to create, to make real work of art with their own hands, they turn away from destroying that which they do not understand.
1999
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