The Big Picture
“Be Social” by Corey Pane at 128 Free Street, Portland. PHOTO: AMY PARADYSZ
Murals bring color, culture and connection to Maine cities
Annette Sohn-Dodd's postcard-style mural at 152 Main Street, Bangor. PHOTO: ALAMY
By Amy Paradysz
A blank white canvas—that’s how Bangor artist Annette Sohns-Dodd saw the side of the Main Street Tavern building every time she sat there waiting for a light to turn.
“I just wanted to paint something there,” she says, adding that many people didn’t think she’d be able to get historical commission approval. Those people underestimated the persuasive qualities of an artist on a mission. In 2014, with the blessing of the tavern owners and inspiration from a brightly colored vintage postcard, Sohns-Dodd painted “Greetings from Bangor, Maine.”
Her brother, Anthony Sohns, was also an arts lover. A decade ago, he commissioned artist Heather Magee to design a poster of Paul Bunyan pointing like Uncle Sam, with the text “BANGOR WANTS YOU. CALLING ALL CREATIVE PEOPLE!” Then, on a cross-country drive, he hung those posters in creative cities coast to coast.
Sohns—who passed in 2019—would be amazed to see what his sister has done to draw creatives to Bangor. It was out of a desire to honor him that in 2020 she painted the Paul Bunyan design on the side of 30 Central Street.
With the completion of that iconic project, murals were now part of the fabric of Bangor.
Peter Walls and Annette Sohns-Dodd in front of their mural at Kenduskeag Tream Strail. PHOTO COURTESY OF BANGOR BEAUTIFUL
“I wanted to see murals all over the city, but not just my work,”said Sohns-Dodd. She approached experienced muralist Peter Walls of Stockton Springs, who agreed to do the detailed efforts on the next Bangor mural, with Sohns-Dodd handling the larger swathes.
And she had a spot and a theme in mind: welcoming people to the natural beauty of the 2.3-mile Kenduskeag Stream Trail. “From downtown Bangor, you can be surrounded by nature in minutes,” Sohns-Dodd said. “There’s Lovers’ Leap. And the stream itself is beautiful. You can hop on rocks, and you cross a few bridges.”
At the entrance to the trail was a spot just begging for beautification: a 14-foot by 82-foot cement wall stained by water drips. There, with the support of a Maine Arts Commission grant, Walls and Sohns-Dodd painted the wildlife that can be seen along the trail: a golden-eyed duck, a kingfisher, a painted turtle, a dragonfly nymph, crayfish and freshwater mussels.
Walls told Sohns-Dodd about his friend Matt Willey, the artist who founded The Good of the Hive project: a commitment to hand paint 50,000 honeybees (the number in a healthy, thriving hive) in murals around the world.
“For the Good of the Hive” at 47 Park Street, Bangor. PHOTO COURTESY OF BANGOR BEAUTIFUL
Bringing The Good of the Hive to Bangor was going to require substantial fundraising. So, in 2022, Sohns-Dodd and accountant Greg Edwards founded the nonprofit Bangor Beautiful for this and future beautification projects.
More than a dozen corporate sponsors and grant funders supported Bangor Beautiful’s first commissioned project: a three-story The Good of the Hive mural on the side of 47 Park Street.
To Willey, the hive symbolizes shared purpose and connection—something that struck a nerve with Bangor Beautiful.
“Every time Matt Willey does a mural, he tries to put in a little thrust about the good of the hive being humanity in general,” Sohns-Dodd said. “Our mural has a bumble bee struggling to get up on a ledge and the other bees are trying to help it.”
Seeing this world-renowned project come to Maine’s third-largest city got the community buzzing. So, when Bangor Beautiful planned for the 2024 summer painting season, there was plenty of support to do what Edwards calls a “blitz”: add art, plant trees and make an area more beautiful, walkable and better for the environment.
This time, Bangor Beautiful’s primary goal was to use art to make Hammond Street safer for pedestrians.
“Bangor is built on a hill, and no matter how you come into downtown, it’s at the bottom,” Sohns-Dodd said. “To slow down traffic, we painted a ground mural with a narrowing of the street and added lane delineators—those things that fold down when hit. A lot of people used to cut the corner completely, but now most people will go out and around and make it into a proper turn.”
The 3,400-sqare-foot mural increases the perceived size of the sidewalks and crosswalks and, as recommended by the National Association of City Transportation Officials, leaves a 10-foot travel lane. It’s a creative solution to a problem that should be solved by repaving planned for next summer.
Wabanaki Health & Wellness, which has a cultural center in the neighborhood, was the lead sponsor. Wabanaki artists Keyana Pardilla and Reanna Sockabasin created the design and led dozens of community volunteers who showed up to paint last summer. Through blue swirls, the artwork follows the path of water downhill from Mount Katahdin toward the Kenduskeag Stream and Penobscot River. The mural ends at a water grate, a reminder that urban runoff flows to the sea. Healthy native food sources such as the Three Sisters (corn, beans and squash) and fiddleheads are also depicted.
The paint on the Hammond Street ground mural was barely dry when commissioned artist The Color Wizard (Jared Goulette) began spray-painting his Spring Woods mural, a two-story, hyper-realistic depiction of a vernal pool at 116 Hammond Street. And on the hill in that area, Bangor Beautiful planted 17 trees to tie everything together.
“If you didn’t drive through Bangor for a month, you got quite a surprise,” Sohns-Dodd says. “Every city is growing and changing, and you can always find things that could have been designed differently or could improve.”
Or opportunities to add a touch of visual interest, provoke critical thinking or develop a sense of place. Like at One Lupine Boutique on Park Street, where a two-story rendering of a sun dial lupine remembers Maine’s single native lupine species (now displaced by the non-native big leaf lupine). Or painting flowers, bees and butterflies at Abraham Lincoln School where students were learning about pollinators. Or painting a tribute to freshwater mussels—nature’s water filters—at the Kenduskeag Pump Station.
There’s always another spot worthy of some creative reimagining when a city is your canvas. Or even if you’re out in the country: In 2012, Darren Connors painted a 35-foot by 15-foot landscape of a potato farm on the A.D. Soucy Farm Supply building on Market Street in rural Fort Kent. And the biggest mural in Maine wraps around the Gem Theatre in the small town of Bethel in the western part of the state.
Meanwhile, there’s a bourgeoning mural culture in Maine’s three largest cities—Portland, Lewiston and Bangor—and in reimagined mill towns like Biddeford, Westbrook and Brunswick. Here are some highlights.
Westbrook
This inland former mill town along the Presumpscot River has a vibrant downtown, just steps from the 0.15-mile Westbrook River Walk. From the River Walk you can’t miss Ryan Adams’ portraits of two Westbrook women—Pat Gallant-Charette, an internationally known long-distance swimmer, and Zoe Sahloul, founder and executive director of New England Arab American Organization—on a river-facing wall of Sindibad Halal Arabic Market.
Rachel Gloria Adams and Ryan Adams’ portrait of two Westbrook women—Pat Gallant-Charette and Zoe Sahloul. PHOTO: RYAN ADAMS
Portland
No surprise here: Maine’s largest city also has the most murals. Arts organization Creative Portland has 57—and counting—on its Public Murals Tour website (creativeportland.com/tours/public-murals-tour). Here we highlight just a few.
An unnamed mural at 950 Congress Street inspired by Portland’s “Forest City” nickname. At the bottom, notice the muralist Pat Corrigan’s creative nod to what his work replaced: a Greyhound bus logo.
Mural at 950 Congress Street by Pat Corrigan. PHOTO: AMY PARADYSZ
Alain Nahimana, the late founder of the Greater Portland Immigrant Welcome Center, is remembered in this Piece Together Project (piece-together.com) mural by Rachel Gloria Adams and Ryan Adams outside Coffee by Design in Portland’s East Bayside neighborhood. While you’re there, look for the portrait of poet Moon Nguany at Rising Tide Brewery.
Portrait of Alain Nahimana by Rachel Gloria Adams and Ryan Adams in Portland, part of the Piece Together Project. PHOTO: RYAN ADAMS
“It’s a Beautiful Day, Whenever We’re Together” is a beautiful collaboration between the gem style of Ryan Adams and the quilt style of his wife Rachel Gloria Adams. For more about art and historic landmarks at Thompson’s Point: thompsonspoint.com/artmap.
Rachel Gloria Adams and Ryan Adams paint “It’s a Beautiful Day, Whenever We’re Together” at Thompson’s Point. PHOTO: JILL HOYLE
Ryan Adams in his studio. PHOTO: BONNIE DURHAM
Ryan Adams
Muralist Ryan Adams, a Westbrook native with a street art–inspired style, is in demand for commissions across the nation. In Maine, his work graces the walls of an astoundingly wide variety of place, including Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Dirigo Collective in Yarmouth, L.L.Bean headquarters in Freeport, a town welcome sign in Norway, a residence hall at the University of Maine Orono, and in Rockland at both the Farnsworth Art Museum and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. In Portland, Adams’ work is found at galleries as well as restaurants and breweries, a hotel, a middle school, a television news station and a pot shop. For an interactive map, see ryanwritesonthings.com/mural-map
Bethel
The state’s largest mural is the 9,000-square-foot work of art that wraps around Gem Theater in the western Maine town of Bethel. Artist Ryan Adams collaborated in 2021 with local Middle School students who chose the statement “We Go Together, We Grow Together” that is embedded within the mural. The six-week, 200-gallons-of-paint project was funded by the Bethel Chamber of Commerce and the Onion Foundation. While you’re in Bethel, catch a movie or live performance at Gem Theater, explore the Maine Mineral & Gem Museum or get a bird’s-eye view of the White Mountains from a gondola ride at Sunday River.
The Gem Theater in Bethel. PHOTO: DAVID CLOUGH
Brunswick
The Fort Andross Mill Complex at 14 Main Street in Brunswick houses over 100 businesses and is the canvas for a 40-foot by 35-foot piece of public art. “Many Stitches Hold Up the Sky” by Jen Greta Cart and Christopher Cart depicts the many cultural influences on the “fabric” of the former mill town. To scale the mural so that it wraps around the building’s grooves and still looks like the original artwork, the width of the piece was stretched by 13%.
“Many Stitches Hold Up The Sky” by Jen Greta Cart and Christopher Cart in Brunswick. PHOTO: AMY PARADYSZ
Lewiston
For a rainy-day mural excursion, head to Maine MILL—which stands for Maine Museum of Innovation Learning and Labor—at 35 Canal Street in Lewiston. As you walk in, you’ll see five 10-foot by 10-foot murals created by local students expressing what “community” means to them. Then explore the rest of the museum, which tells the story of Lewiston’s industrial history and the broader story of central Maine (mainemill.org).
A mural by local students at the Maine Museum of Innovation Learning and Labor. PHOTO: MARY KATE MACVICAR
Biddeford
“One Blue Sky” by Pat Perry in Biddeford. PHOTO: AMY PARADYSZ
This revitalized mill town has a foodie reputation and thriving arts scene with Main Street organization Heart of Biddeford picking up the good works started by former arts nonprofit Engine through a new program called Art of Biddeford. While you’re there: The 1-mile Biddeford River Walk offers dramatic views of the powerful Saco River, and Biddeford Mills Museum tells the story of the community’s industrial origins.
“One Blue Sky” by Pat Perry depicts a boy on a phone peering through a barbed wire fence. A companion mural in Slemani, Iraq, depicts a girl on a phone. Each child is surrounded by images and messages of friendship, empathy and peace, painted on by fourth- and fifth-grade students. The goal was to foster empathy and friendship. The Biddeford mural at 15 York Street (Pepperell Mill building 9, behind Main Street) was curated through Engine and aptART (Awareness & Prevention Through Art) and commissioned by The Good Works Foundation in 2019.
Mural by Julie Gray in Biddeford. PHOTO: AMY PARADYSZ
This untitled 2015 mural by Julie Gray of a monkey riding a penny farthing with an apple on its head symbolizes Biddeford’s creative spirit and wellness. While you’re here at 265 Main Street, stop at Elements bookshop for a locally roasted pour-over coffee or local brew.
The cityscape by Susan Bartlett Rice on the side of New Morning Natural Foods (3 York Street) was created in 2019 with funding from Bangor Savings Foundation and was chosen by a community vote.
Mural by Susan Bartlett Rice in Biddeford. PHOTO: AMY PARADYSZ
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