[OMS_MANAGERS] Murals and public comment/feedback

[Mary Wallace]

I would recommend checking with the Silverton Mural Society. They have the largest collection of murals in any sm  town I’ve ever seen. The original  one was painted by Norman Rockwell. A non profit here in Stayton contacted them over 10 years ago and found there was a lot more to it than we had realized, so we didn’t pursue it. 

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> On Jun 6, 2022, at 9:13 AM, Sheridan Revitalization <revitalizesheridan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> We just had our first mural go up in our small town of Sheridan, which was done in cooperation with our Main Street Group (Sheridan Revitalization), the property owner/manager and the local artist. It's a brightly colored mural with Oregon and local elements (trees, animals, our bridge, etc) and in the shape of a mandala. So far most people really like it, even though it's not totally finished as the rain started.
> 
> The issue we are having is that another local artist/muralist attended our meeting last week and then went to other local non-profit meetings (Chamber and Rotary) to state her strong dislike of the mural and of our process in having the mural go up or doing them at all. She likened the mural to looking like a seagull pooped on the wall. She was rather offensive, but it got me thinking that maybe we do need to look at how we go about choosing the murals and getting public feedback?
> 
> We started on this project actually before Covid, when we mentioned the plan publically on social media, also in the local paper and continued the discussion during almost every public meeting, which were also advertised. 
> 
> We had originally looked at having the artist coordinate with the owner and then submit three artwork ideas which we would let the public vote on, but it got way too complicated so we decided we would let the artist and property owner decide on the artwork, with the agreement that it wouldn't be anything political and that it would include a bigfoot. The idea is to have a bigfoot hidden in each mural, to tie them all together and to bring interest in the idea of a walking mural tour of the town.
> 
> Does anyone have a workable process they have developed to get the public agreement/feedback on murals or are you willing to share how the artwork gets approved, or if it gets approved? I don't want to make things more complicated, since it's really just a feat for us to get a mural up at all, but I also don't want to create needless upset within the community. As a note, there is no public ordinance as relates to murals or public artwork.
> 
> I have heard that this local artist who is making a fuss about the mural does not have the best reputation, and has been known to be confrontational, so I don't want to make major changes just because she has a problem, but I do want to make sure we are comfortable with our process moving forward.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Best,
> Tkeisha Wydro
> Sheridan Revitalization President