As a mural artist, my assignment was to create an Immersive Exhibition Experience in the street-art style as a response to the Walker Evans American Photographs. The theme of community, change, and hardship guided the design. The mural’s aim was to show a clear connection between the COVID-19 pandemic and the Great Depression (1929 -1939).

The 8 x 44-foot street art mural ties in these photographs of the Great Depression with images of Covid-19. A sequence of images creates a timeline of how the Covid pandemic was experienced. The background colors go from dark to light, symbolizing the collective mood. The story starts off with dark blue colors, transitions to a blue-purple, then moves into a purple-orange, and finishes with yellow as things come back to some semblance of normal.

Images depict masked faces, sadness, depression, fear, hospitalization, and closed businesses. Symbols afloat form the background, including hand sanitizer, spray bottles, gloves, and masks. As the color brightens, the smiling faces are without their masks. Family and friends gather together once again, and things come alive. The Union Station clock tower and St. Anne buildings place the mural in Waterbury, CT.

The materials used in the painting are exterior paints and acrylics. It is painted on a mural fabric called Polytab, and adhered to 11 aluminum panels finished with a topcoat.

Museum employees and locals who use the museum, including 40 young students, painted with me. As a community-based artist, I love to include participants in the initial stage of painting. A number of Waterbury residents let me incorporate their faces into the design. The entire process is documented on a YouTube video called Mattatuck Museum mural.

It was an honor and a privilege to be a part of this important project. My hope is that the mural will get people thinking about challenging times in our nation’s history, and better prepare us for the future.