‘A cool project’

Endangered-species mural in works for Conway

Brontez Harris of Morrilton and Tyresha Byers of Cleveland, holding her Yorkie, Bentley, walk across the crosswalk at Oak and Court streets in downtown Conway. The blank wall on Court Street, the east side of Jenifer’s Antiques, is one possibility for an endangered-species mural that the Center for Biological Diversity may fund. The Conway Public Art Board is helping with the proposal.
Brontez Harris of Morrilton and Tyresha Byers of Cleveland, holding her Yorkie, Bentley, walk across the crosswalk at Oak and Court streets in downtown Conway. The blank wall on Court Street, the east side of Jenifer’s Antiques, is one possibility for an endangered-species mural that the Center for Biological Diversity may fund. The Conway Public Art Board is helping with the proposal.

A mural featuring one of Arkansas’ endangered species is being considered by the Conway Public Art Board in conjunction with the Center for Biological Diversity and other partners.

“We’re still in the beginning stages; we don’t even have a location, yet,” said Beth Norwood of Conway, a member of the board.

The committee hasn’t picked which endangered species to be featured, either.

“The hellbender salamander — that has been thrown out as an idea,” Norwood said.

The idea originated with Melissa

Lombardi of Wooster, endangered-species biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service office in Conway, who came across the idea on

social media.

“As so many stories do, it started with

Facebook,” Lombardi said, laughing. “I saw a posting for Center for Biological Diversity that had done a mural of a little darter, a little fish, and it was really colorful. I thought we should do that, too — Arkansas has some great species.”

Lombardi said she shared the idea with Maxine Payne, an art-faculty member at Hendrix College in Conway. Payne told Norwood, a part-time art-history professor at Hendrix College and Arkansas Tech

University in Russellville.

“We do know we would like to have Hendrix students help with this,” Norwood said.

She said Payne plans to write a grant proposal through the Hendrix Odyssey Program so students can stay and work on the mural during the summer.

Norwood and Lombardi said it likely would be spring or summer 2017 before any painting begins.

Lombardi said the Center for Biological Diversity funds the Endangered Species Mural Project in various locations throughout the United States and is close to approving one for Conway.

The leading contender for the mural, a Conway Public Art Board member said, is the blank east side wall of Jenifer’s Antiques at Oak and Court streets.

“They’re getting toward it; they like the wall of Jenifer’s Antiques as a site. It’s definitely in the works. It’s all but ‘here’s the check,’” she said.

“We really don’t know the cost. It depends on size; it depends on paint; it depends on the complexity of the design,” Lombardi said.

Oregon artist Roger Peet coordinates the murals for the Center for Biological Diversity, she said, and local artists will be involved, too.

Jenifer Hendrix, owner of Jenifer’s Antiques, said she is open to the idea of a mural being painted on her building.

“I’m on board as long as — I have to see and approve everything,” she said. “I really trust Maxine Payne, and she was sort of our liaison.”

Ruthann Curry Browne, chairwoman of the public-art board, said members have scouted several potential sites. Other than Jenifer’s Antiques, she said possible locations for the mural include the walls of the bathrooms at Laurel Park, which is near downtown, and Fifth Avenue Park.

She said the Center for Biological Diversity prefers that the mural be downtown. The mural must also have an “education component” so students can benefit from the work,

Browne said.

Norwood said no existing murals would be painted over.

“At least for me, personally, I think it’s really important that we maintain public art we already have,” Norwood said.

She said the Conway Public Art Board will be responsible for providing “technical support” for the mural.

“When the time comes, we will put out a request for qualifications, a request for proposals,” she said. Norwood said it could be next summer before any painting is done. “It takes that long to get all those proposals out and get really … settled on a concept and a design, and we also have to work with the timing of the artist.”

Lombardi said the board would like to get public input, “involve the schools — [the University of Central Arkansas], Hendrix, even in the design and implementation.”

Although she is optimistic that the Center for Biological Diversity will fund the mural, Lombardi said if that doesn’t go through, other possible funding sources include the Arkansas Arts Council.

“That may be an option, too. I don’t want that [funding] to stop us from getting [the mural] on the wall.”

The Center for Biological Diversity mural requires at least a five-year commitment on the space, Lombardi said, and the mural design must have a list of partners, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Hendrix College, the Conway Public Art Board, the city of Conway

and others.

Lombardi said Center for Biological Diversity murals usually feature just one endangered species — and Arkansas has 37.

“People aren’t aware of what rare and cool stuff we have,” she said. “I love the Ozark hellbender. That’s my favorite,” she said of the aquatic salamander. “They are rare and amazing — the wrinkly skin they breathe through; they live 50-plus years; they live under flat rocks; they’re nocturnal and come out at night.”

She also mentioned the American burying beetle, “one of the few insects that has parental care,” she said. “They’re cute; they’re black and red.”

According to the Center for Biological Diversity website, the center has sponsored six endangered-species murals — yellow-billed cuckoos on a high school campus in Los Angeles, and the gray whale at another location in Los Angeles; mountain caribou in Sandpoint, Idaho; the Arctic grayling in Butte, Montana; the monarch butterfly in Minneapolis; and the watercress darter in Birmingham, Alabama, which is the one that caught Lombardi’s attention.

More murals are planned, the website states, including in St. Louis, Missouri; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Oakridge, Oregon.

The Conway Public Art Board started in February after getting approval from the

Conway City Council and being given a $120,000 budget.

“At the end of 2015, a bunch of us in the arts community attended quite a few City Council meetings to advocate for the new formation of the public-art committee with a little bit of funding,” Norwood said.

“Inclusion of any kind of public art is important,”

Norwood said. “It’s a way to open up community members to the art world, which can be so intimidating to so many. I see that day to day in my teaching of art history. I think there’s an intimidation factor.

“By including more public art in the community, I think it’s going to lower that barrier into the art world.”

Conway Public Art Board member Kelley Erstine, chief of staff at the University of Central Arkansas, said he loves the idea of a public-art board. The City Council gave the board seed money to “see what we could do to really bring about more of a presence of public art in Conway — as much as a visible presence, also to help with the education of public art and placement of public art.”

The mural is one of many projects the board’s members hope to be involved in.

“It should be a cool project to kick off,” Norwood said.

More information about the murals can be found at www.biologicaldiversity.org/about/creative_media/endangered_species_mural_project. More information about the Conway Public Art Board is available at www.cityofconway.org.

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

Upcoming Events