Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
City’s Arts Council plans for murals
Paintings would be added to part of wall along Archibald Yell Boulevard
FAYETTEVILLE — A Fayetteville High School bulldog sat all alone for years on the northern end of the retaining wall along Archibald Yell Boulevard.
He got some friends last year. Fayetteville artist Austin Floyd painted an elk on roller skates, a bear on a bicycle pulling her cub in a wagon, a fox on a scooter and squirrels on a skateboard next to the unaccompanied mascot. The bulldog also got a makeover and a school flag to carry.
On the southern end of the wall, Springdale artist Jeremy Navarrette painted images of nature within sharp angles representing the Razorback Greenway. Flowers, fireflies, a biplane, a couple walking a dog near Lake Fayetteville at sunset, a bicyclist heading up a hill and a cardinal completed the piece. The cardinal was Navarrette’s grandmother’s favorite bird.
Those pieces are about to get some neighbors. The city’s resident-led Arts Council has a plan to have murals painted on a segment of the wall each year for the next five years. The completed wall would culminate with the city’s 200th anniversary in 2028.
There’s more than 500 linear feet of blank wall left for artists to use as a canvas, said Joanna Bell, the city’s arts and culture director. Giving different artists an opportunity to create pieces in varying styles would give the city a chance to show people what the community is all about, she said.
“It would serve as a visual representation of the community’s character, history and values,” Bell wrote in a proposal for the idea. “It would instill a sense of identity and belonging among residents and inspire admiration and interest among visitors.”
ADDRESSING HISTORY
Each piece would be unveiled on the Juneteenth holiday starting next year. The national holiday on June 19 commemorates the emancipation of enslaved people in the United States.
The Arts Council chose Juneteenth because of the street’s pending renaming to Nelson Hackett Boulevard. The city plans to rename the street this Juneteenth.
The City Council approved the renaming in September. Hackett was an enslaved man who fled Fayetteville in 1841 seeking freedom, making his way to Canada. The man who claimed to own Hackett demanded extradition.
Yell, Arkansas’ governor at the time, wrote a letter to the colonial governor of Canada requesting Hackett be returned. The request was granted.
Hackett was brought back to Fayetteville in summer 1842. He was publicly whipped several times, tortured and sold back into slavery in Texas. He escaped again, and his fate remains unknown.
Bell recently presented the idea for the mural project to the city’s Black Heritage Preservation Commission. She said the idea is to have some kind of unifying theme throughout the pieces that tells a story. The Arts Council will consult with the commission to determine that theme.
Commissioners at the meeting suggested recreating aspects of a wall that had murals on it on the east side of West Avenue, near the public library. They also said selected artists should be diverse and praised scheduling the unveilings on Juneteenth to highlight the holiday and the city’s history.
Bob Stafford, an Arts Council member, said he felt it was important to acknowledge the street’s history with the upcoming murals. Streets in the southern part of town were laid out in a grid, according to aerial photographs from the 1940s. Archibald Yell Boulevard was built in 1953 and separated neighborhoods to the southeast from downtown.
“It was literally a ‘this side or that side of the tracks’ kind of road,” Stafford said. “I think as we’re going in the direction of rebuilding that connection to the southeast side of town, what a great place to address that history — with art.”
AN IDEAL CANVAS
The city is in the middle of a project to overhaul the street and its intersections with Rock Street and College Avenue. The street will be repaved, with traffic reduced to three lanes. Crews also will install a traffic signal at South Street and add pedestrian crossings.
The sidewalk next to the wall will stay the same, Public Works Director Chris Brown said. However, the city plans to stripe a bicycle path with rumble strips in between the sidewalk and the nearest car lane, defining space between pedestrians and cars, he said.
Construction is set to wrap in April, Brown said. Money for the $3 million project is coming mostly from a transportation bond issue voters approved in 2019, with about $ 316,000 coming from the city’s water and sewer fund.
The wall presents an ideal canvas for artists, Navarrette said. It’s a straight vertical wall with a texture that receives paint well, he said.
Navarrette said he looked forward to different artists painting in varied styles along the wall, as opposed to one artist creating a singular piece. That allows the city to showcase its embrace of diversity and art in a prominent location people will see when they head north into town, he said.
Onlookers frequently would ask Navarrette when the rest of the wall would be painted when Navarrette was working on his piece on the southern end, he said.
“It’s this bare wall that everybody sees all the time,” Navarrette said. “Why not have some cool artwork on it?”
The city will open formal requests for proposals from artists once the Arts Council is ready to consider selections, most likely at the start of next year, Bell said. The council will consider the submissions and choose an artist during its public meetings.
Money to pay artists will come from the city’s arts and culture work plan budget. The budget for future years isn’t set, but this year’s budget is $169,874, Bell said.
Navarrette received $14,200 for his work on the larger mural. Floyd was paid $3,800 for the smaller one.