CITY OF MURALS GROWS BY TWO
Painters add local history and justice for all to Annapolis cityscape
There are many things to do in Annapolis on a sunny 70-degree Sunday, but painting murals sounded like the best option for two groups of dedicated artists.
Annapolis artist Comacell Brown and Future History Now are both finishing two murals, adding to the city’s growing collection of public art.
“I was a nervous wreck before I started, but just staying confident in the process keeps me going. It is exciting to take a piece of history and to be able to display that in my perspective in artwork,” Brown said.
Brown’s mural is on the site of the Maryland Cultural and Conference Center StageOne at Park Place. He is painting the history of Carr’s Beach, a cultural landmark in Annapolis that was a major performance venue for Black musicians.
Future History Now, meanwhile, is painting a mural across
South Street from the county courthouse. The group is working on the Equal Justice Mural, which features the late U.S. Supreme Court justices Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Future History Now leader Jeff Huntington said it took him five years to get approval to paint on the wall his group is painting.
“To have them across from the courthouse and when you pass security, Ginsburg and Marshall will be the second line of security as people walk past the windows,” Huntington said. “It means everything for the city to give us the opportunity to put something so meaningful here.”
Jemma Lehner, director of programming, and Mattie Fenton, executive director of the Maryland Cultural and Conference Center, have been watching the progress of Brown’s and his volunteers’ work daily. The site is at an open field facing Taylor Avenue, but organizers hope to raise funds to build a performing arts center on the site.
Earlier this year, the effort was rebranded with a new mission statement focused on diversity and inclusion in the Annapolis arts community.
The center will be putting on an outdoor concert series on the second Friday of every month starting in June that will include diverse artists. The program will be called “Meet us at the beach at Park Place.”
“We want people to bring beach chairs, beach towels, and there will be food trucks, so people can enjoy family time and being in a community like they did at Carr’s Beach,” Fenton said.
Lehner has been enjoying the spring weather and seeing the kids help paint the wall.
Imran Okedeyi, 15, is one of those kids working on the mural as part of a group from the Box of Rain program. He loves painting and giving back to his community, so this was a great opportunity to do both.
“This means a lot — anytime someone or myself drives by I know I helped make this. It’s beautiful outside and it is nice being out of the house,” Okedeyi said.
Brown did research on Carr’s Beach that gave him new respect for elders in the community and Black history. He reached out to local historians to help chose photos incorporated in the mural to encapsulate the history of the beach.
The mural includes Hoppy Adams, who had a distinguished radio career in Annapolis. Mary Florence Carr-Sparrow and Elizabeth Carr-Smith are there, too, who used land they got from their father on the Chesapeake Bay as two beach separate resorts, Carr and Sparrow beaches.
R&B legend James Brown, a frequent performer at Carr’s Beach, is featured. So is George Phelps Jr., who ran security at the resort and later was the first Black deputy sheriff in Anne Arundel County.
“If this can give people the sense of being there, that pleases me,” Brown said. “To be able to have people that didn’t get the chance to experience the beach to live it at this moment while looking at the artwork.”
Brown noticed that he and Huntington started the murals the same weekend, and he is thankful they got the good weather.
Huntington was expecting rain all weekend but feels “blessed with this weather.”
Volunteers were involved in the justice memorial, too. Huntington designed then so the eyes will follow a person walking down the street, or through courthouse windows.
Mahi Rimjhim, 15, from Annapolis High School felt that she gains more experience every time she helps paint a mural with Future History Now.
“I like how it turned out, and I am honored to paint these two people,” Rimjhim said.
Annapolis Alderman DaJuan Gay, D-Ward 6, stop by to look at the murals on his day off.
“This mural speaks to how diverse we want our city to be, two great icons of different backgrounds and contributing to a better community,” Gay said. “Art brings tourists and brings the people out, I support that.”