‘A DREAM WALL’

100-foot Hartford mural will be tallest in the state

“With everything going on, all the craziness in the world, it was a perfect time to do something that points to hope and change in the future.”

— Corey Pane, Hartford muralist

The tallest exterior mural in Connecticut, a 100-foottall image of a young woman watering flowers, is being painted at the corner of Ann Uccello and Pearl streets in Hartford. Prolific Hartford muralist Corey Pane created the painting, titled “Let’s Grow,” on the side of the eight-story Goodwin Garage across the street from TheaterWorks.

Pane’s friend, Kailah King of Hartford, is the model for the mural. In the image, King wears a lemon-yellow dress and a yellow bandana as she waters flowers. The flower garden she is watering tumbles around the side of the red brick building adjacent to the parking structure. Three dogs hang around in the garden.

“I wanted the mural to be something that just brightened people’s days, breathed some

sunshine into their day,” said Pane.

“I did a lot of daffodils because that is the first flower that comes up in the spring,” he said. “With everything going on, all the craziness in the world, it was a perfect time to do something that points to hope and change in the future.”

Pane called the towering off-white garage — owned by Goodwin Square Building LLC — “a dream wall I’ve been wanting to paint for a long time.”

The mural will be completed by next week, according to Matt Conway of CT Murals. CT Murals is a project of RiseUp for Arts, an initiative that helps to perk up exterior spaces around the state with public artworks. CT Murals sponsored Pane’s mural in collaboration with the Hartford Business Improvement District.

‘Racial Equity’ murals

Next, Pane will paint murals at Noah Webster Library in West Hartford and in Manchester, at Mahoney Center at 110 Cedar St. The Manchester mural will be created with Ben Keller and Ryan Christenson, who is known by the street tag ARCY.

“We are each doing a portrait and then trying to merge everything together. I am doing Diane Clare-Kearney, who works in the Manchester public schools and is always working for social justice. Ben is doing Harriet Tubman and ARCY is doing John Lewis,” he said about the Manchester mural.

The West Hartford mural will include portraits of Martin Luther King Jr., Stacey Abrams, Bernard Lafayette, Gertrude Blanks and Tammy Exum.

Both of those murals are part of

the “Racial Equity Mural Tour” being spearheaded by CT Murals and the Connecticut Center for Nonviolence. The goal of the tour, Conway said, is to create 39 murals of racial-justice activists and Black icons. The number 39 was chosen because Martin Luther King Jr. was 39 when he died. The first of the racial justice murals was unveiled in Manchester in January, an image of MLK by Keller.

The Manchester and West Hartford murals are slated to be unveiled on Juneteenth, June 19, Conway said. On that day, three other Racial Equity Mural Tour artworks will be unveiled, including:

■ A mural at 42 Water St. in Torrington, created by Keller, of John Brown, MLK and poet Amanda Gorman

■ A mural at 370 Park Ave. in Bloomfield, created by ARCY, of Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, MLK and Bloomfield native Dwight Freeney

■ A mural at 350 Washington St. in New Haven, created by Isaac Bloodworth and Kyle Kearson, with an image of Coretta Scott King and a poem by Sun Queen of New Haven

Conway said other Racial Equity murals are in the planning stages in Fairfield, Hamden, East Hartford, Putnam, Southington and a third mural in Manchester. All three Manchester murals will be at Mahoney Center.

Anyone who wants to sponsor a mural in Connecticut can contact Conway at ctmurals.com.

KASSI JACKSON/HARTFORD COURANT PHOTOS At eight stories high, “Let’s Grow” is Connecticut’s tallest mural, located on the back of Goodwin Square at the corner of Pearl and Ann Uccello streets in downtown Hartford. Painted by Corey Pane and sponsored by RiseUP for Arts/CT Murals and the Hartford Business Improvement District, it shows a local artist watering beautiful flowers. It is meant to represent Hartford’s growth post-pandemic.

Kyra Dorsey, of West Hartford, smiles as she helps paint a mural during a community paint day Saturday on the side of the Noah Webster Library in West Hartford Center. Racial equity murals are being installed in communities throughout the state and are a project of RiseUP for Arts.

KASSI JACKSON/HARTFORD COURANT Madison Conway, 13 months, is assisted by her mom, Carmen Conway, of East Granby, as she paints on a canvas during a community paint day Saturday, laying the base coat for an MLK-inspired mural on the side of the Noah Webster Library in West Hartford Center.