Читать книгу Count the Wings - Michelle Houts - Страница 9

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A MURAL MYSTERY

I asked one of the guys who had done construction with the city if there were some murals covered up and he said, “Yes. You’ve got two murals in there.”

—Ric Booth, General Manager, Duke Energy Convention Center¹

ON A MONDAY afternoon in August 2014, a small group of people gathered inside the Duke Energy Convention Center in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. Among them were a city council member, a newspaper reporter, and some folks who worked for the convention center. They stood in front of a small hole that had been recently cut in the wall. One by one, while a maintenance worker held a flashlight to illuminate the darkness, the people peered inside.

What had everyone so intrigued?

Behind the wall stood a very large mosaic mural designed by one of Cincinnati’s favorite artists, Charles Burton Harper. A person wouldn’t have to spend much time in Cincinnati to know just how much the city loves Charley Harper’s work. In fact, a few blocks from the convention center is a six-story building bearing Charley’s painting Homecoming, in which a bluebird pair inspects a potential home for their brood. This larger-than-life project was funded by Cincinnati’s ArtWorks and painted by artist Jenny Ustick, two art teachers, and twelve students.

HOMECOMING

Atop one of the city’s seven hills, another ArtWorks project, the Cincinnati Zoo’s City Barn, bears many of Harper’s designs. Even visitors to the John Weld Peck Federal Building, located downtown, find themselves surrounded by Charley’s Space for All Species tile mural as they wait for an elevator.

Why, then, if Charley Harper’s work is so revered, would a mural—actually two murals—be hidden away beneath the walls of the convention center? Who covered them and why? And now that there’s a hole in the wall through which the colorful tiles can be viewed, will the murals see daylight once more?

THE ZOO BARN

THE MURAL AT THE PECK FEDERAL BUILDING

Courtesy of Charley Harper Art Studio. Photo by Ross Van Pelt-RVP Photography

To discover the answers to these questions, we’ll have to find out more about Charley Harper, the artist. So, let’s start where Charley started—on a farm in West Virginia.

HARPER FARM WITH MAILBOX

Even though farming wasn’t in his future, Charley connected with the West Virginia countryside he called home for the first nineteen years of his life.

Courtesy of Charley Harper Art Studio

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