Public Invited to Contribute to Community Mural at Stewart Rd Underpass at MKT Trail

The public is invited to the community feedback session to discuss a community mural, at 5 p.m. on Monday, June 19. At the meeting, the CARE (Career Awareness Related Experience) program of the City of Columbia's Department of Parks and Recreation, and lead artist Madeleine LeMieux of Resident Arts, will share their draft design for the mural to be installed this summer at the Stewart Road underpass on the MKT Trail.

Attendees are welcome to listen to a brief presentation from the young CARE artists, and share their impressions of the design. Additional opportunities throughout the summer will be available for the public to participate in this mural project including a community painting day to be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on July 8, and a public unveiling at 5 p.m. on August 1. Teens from the CARE program and CARE Art Gallery program will work to complete the mural throughout July.

The trainees have worked throughout the spring with Daniel Boone Regional Library, One Mic, and Mary Beth Brown of the University of Missouri's Department of Black Studies, to do research based on a quote by James Baldwin, "Not Everything That Can Be Faced Can be Changed But Nothing Can Be Changed Until It Is Faced," which acts as the central theme of the mural. The quote was chosen to acknowledge the site's violent past, the 1923 lynching of James T. Scott, which was memorialized by the Lest We Forget marker near the mural site last fall. The design uses imagery from Columbia's local history as a reminder that in order for our society to grow we must first face our past and learn from it.  

This project is based off of its pilot version which launched last year at the Locust Street underpass at Flat Branch Park and aims to continue to connect the two locations in a mural corridor over the next several years, producing a mural on each wall of the underpasses which embrace a general theme of community and environmental stewardship in an ongoing effort by Columbia Parks and Recreation to beautify the underpasses and deter vandalism.