The annual collaboration quickly became a spring tradition in Chapel Hill, with the last mural, Paint by Numbers completed in 2003. Brown also typically starts his murals by painting the background color and a grid, then filling in the grid from a planned drawing, a method that can make it easier to communicate his design to volunteers and to supervise the project. Brown has stated that he chose a pointillist style for the mural because he thought the technique might help unify the contributions of volunteers who had little experience painting.
Since the Downtown Commission and the Chapel Hill-Carrboro School System co-sponsored the mural, Brown was required to work with young student volunteers on the project. Although Brown had some experience painting houses and had worked on mural projects in his youth, Blue Mural turned out to be the project that established his reputation in Chapel Hill and led to subsequent requests for murals in the area at a rate of about one per year. īrown had graduated from the art department at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1977 and was looking for work as an artist when the opportunity emerged to complete a project for the Downtown Commission in Chapel Hill. It can be viewed from a public parking lot on the corner of Rosemary Street and North Columbia Street and is based on Brown's memories of Franklin Street's appearance when he worked as a dishwasher at Ye Olde Waffle Shop. Michael's Brown's first mural in Chapel, the Blue Mural features a night-time cityscape of Chapel Hill and was completed in 1989. It was completed for the town's bicentennial and follows the style of Cornwell's piece.
In 1993, Brown painted a companion mural on another interior wall of the building, titled The Auctioning of the Lots. It can be seen on an interior wall of the Chapel Hill Post Office.Īlthough Cornwell's artwork proves that murals existed in Chapel Hill before Michael Brown began painting, the beginning of the town's outdoor mural tradition is attributed to him. It depicts William Richardson Davie laying the cornerstone of Old East, the first building constructed on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1941, commercial artist Dean Cornwell painted the earliest public mural still currently visible in Chapel Hill. Although Brown is not the first or only artist to contribute to the public murals of downtown Chapel Hill, his prolific work has helped characterize the town's appearance and begun a trend of local community involvement with mural painting.
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Several collaborative murals have been painted exclusively by local volunteers, and other projects have used volunteer efforts to complete designs by professional artists. īesides Brown, artists such as Loren Pease (Sweetpease Art), David Wilson, Scott Nurkin and Casey Robertson have contributed to the Chapel Hill area's outdoor art. Painting should continue through December 2012. He is also currently working on an as yet untitled mural that will decorate the side of the new Mellow Mushroom restaurant that is set to open on Franklin street. The event relied on the assistance of student volunteers who helped Brown paint the murals, turning them into collaborative community arts projects.īrown's latest complete mural, Ramses, resides on the inside of UNC's Student Stores. Many of Brown's early murals, including his first, Blue Mural, were painted as part of an annual local arts event that ran continuously until 2001. Some, like the mural Dogwoods, which adorns the exterior wall of the Orange County Visitor's Center, have been commissioned directly by the town of Chapel Hill, and others have been painted on private property with the town's permission. The murals have been funded by the town and county governments, as well as by local businesses. Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in the United States, has more than 30 distinctive murals, most by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumnus Michael Brown.
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