Iconic mural, showing its age, being replaced
One of downtown’s most visible and enduring public art works soon will be a memory.
The 2- decade- old mural depicting pastoral scenes of Loveland and its surroundings was scheduled to be removed, starting Saturday, from the north side of the Lincoln Gallery because of its deteriorating condition.
“It’s a pretty big thing that this has been up so long to take it down,” said Jill Atchison, executive director of the Thompson Valley Art League, which owns the gallery and building.
“But, it’s time. Murals are supposed to last 10 to 15 years, not 25.”
T he mural’s advancing age became obvious up close. The paint was fading or peeling in several areas, then falling off the wall into thick chunks on the sidewalk. There also was water damage evident in places.
Although repair and patching efforts have been made over the years, Atchison said, the deterioration continued until it became more feasible to replace it.
“We’ve been refurbishing and fixing and patching and refurbishing and patching, over and over,” she said. “We received a facade grant from the city to redo the entire facade. So the decision was made. It’s time.”
The date on the mural’s signature reads 2001, but it was close to two years before that when Loveland artist Mary Giacomini first volunteered to help the art league paint the 70- foot scene.
“I raised my hand in a meeting,” she recalled with a wry chuckle.
Little did she know that she would spend the next year and a half planning, preparing and painting the mural, a part of the process that took Giacomini and the three other artists — Mary Landis, Pat Saunders- White and Sherry Allerheiligen — an estimated 750 hours to complete.
Giacomini said she was sad to see the mural go, especially after all of the unpaid time and labor
that went into the project.
“We looked into trying to restore it,” she said. “It’s just because the wall wasn’t property prepped for paint in the first place. Plus, I think they’ve had
some leaking problems with the roof. But it’s heartbreaking, because we put in an incredible amount of work for no pay and some of our own supplies.”
Although she didn’t receive monetary compensation, Giacomini said that the project ultimately paid off in something much more valuable.
“Even though this work of art is not preservable, by volunteering, I made my closest friends,” she said. “So that was a huge perk.”
According to Atchison, the process for removing the mural included stripping the paint off, repairing the wall and repainting it white with a strip of color, a temporary placeholder for a new mural to be painted next year.
It’s part of a rebranding effort by the gallery and the art league, which has seen sharp growth in new membership since the pandemic began.
For the replacement mural, Atchison will work with the city’s Art in Public Places to put out a call for artists this year.
She hasn’t given much thought about specifics of the design but wants it to “look different” from the three other murals visible from the gallery.