Mural Painting: Connecting Art, Nature, and Community (transcript)

Eddie: I don’t think that the mural itself is going to change any minds or be a world-changing thing. But if you get people in the same place talking about the same thing, then the people who are there are the ones who can go out and like do s***.

Host (Wesley Slover): This is the Collab Collection, where we collect stories and useful insights about creative collaboration. I’m Wesley Slover. I got into long-distance running maybe eight years ago and have grown to love it. One of the things I love about it is passing so much amazing artwork on my running routes.

Grand Rapids, the city I live in, has a thriving creative culture and a lot of wonderful murals. One of my favorites is a mural downtown that features a gigantic trout, sturgeon, and loon against a stark backdrop with various bits of iconic Michigan landscape. I was passing it on a run one day and I thought, "Hey, I should reach out to the artist. Maybe they'd want to talk about how they collaborate on a piece like this". I assumed this would be a nice straightforward story—someone has a wall, someone has a vision to paint something beautiful on it.

But that mural was actually incredibly difficult and stressful to put up. This is Eddie Chaffer, who goes by the alias Sun Visual. Their mural is called Pleasant Peninsula. Its name comes from Michigan's state motto: If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you. For some reason, I thought that the message of "Michigan is beautiful" would be a hit, but it was actually kind of controversial.

The mural is painted on a condo building, and the owners reached out a couple of years before Eddie eventually ended up painting it. The building had an existing mural, but it was being removed for wall repairs. They were looking for a replacement.

Eddie: I’ve always been really enamored with the outdoors and with the woods in particular. Growing up in Michigan was incredible; I was just traipsing around in the woods my whole life. So we designed the piece to reflect Michigan's natural beauty and tell a story about its history.

It has the brook trout, which is at a healthy population. The sturgeon was a really good example of a conservation success story where they were super endangered until we started giving power back to indigenous leaders and paying attention to traditional land management practices. Then the loons are currently endangered in the lakes as they move further north as it gets warmer—that one is a call to action.

Host: Eddie designed the piece, got approval from the condo owners, and raised the funding to make it happen. Then, ownership of the condo changed hands, and it all went downhill from there.

Eddie: Every single owner had to have an opinion and tell me what they thought about the fish. I got pushback from stuff as silly as people saying, "I think the sturgeon is actually a really ugly fish. I don't think we should have the sturgeon". Then on the more serious side, people were saying, "I just don't think that this is a good reflection of where we're going with our city". It essentially sounded like we should just paint high-rise buildings on high-rise buildings.

Host: Eddie didn't only have to convince the new condo owners; they also had to contend with the parking lot that shares the wall. They needed to use eight spaces against the wall to drive the lift.

Eddie: I was like, "All I need is enough support that I can just do it and not go broke". An unnamed parking entity told me I could put my lift there, but they had to charge for the spots. I suggested a community donation since it was public art, but they said they’d cut me a "cool deal" of $100 per day per spot. I ended up writing a check for like $4,000 to paint this mural about a goddamn fish.

Host: The condo was dragging their feet about approving the mural, so Eddie reached out to the Blandford Nature Center, a beloved nature preserve in Grand Rapids.

Eddie: I was like, "Hey, Blandford, these people are being a total stick in the mud. Can you write me a letter of support?". They agreed and suggested other organizations as well. So I went back to the building owners with Blandford, Friends of GR Parks, and the land conservancy all under my belt.

Host: That worked, though begrudgingly. Because all of these organizations had put their support behind the mural, it grew into a massive event.

Eddie: It snowballed from me just trying to paint a wall into organizing an event with five bands, five speakers, 15 environmental organizations, and about 30 local artists. I realized suddenly I had a whole event to plan, and I didn't know anything about event planning.

Host: That is when Erica Colin, an acquaintance of Eddie's, reached out.

Eddie: Erica was like, "Dude, I just lost my job. I would love to do this". Together, they were able to accomplish so much that it actually grew from a single mural into an organization that puts on an annual mural festival. I consider Erica my co-founder; she is the "emails person", the "making calls person," the "won't stop calling you if she needs something from you" person.

Host: Having science give the art grounding in the real world made the art better, and for the scientists, the art allowed them to communicate their research more accessibly.

Eddie: It was eye-opening to see so many people talking about the same thing in a different way. Usually, I'm lucky enough now to say no to things and paint for like-minded people. I get jobs through people who say, "You seem tapped into nature. Do you want to do some nature stuff?".

I’ll ask, "What do you love about the woods?" and if they say coyotes, we do a coyote. I once did a mural in Key West after hanging out in the Everglades for three weeks learning about mangroves and how that ecosystem holds itself together. From talking to people on the islands, I realized the way they rebuild after hurricanes is just like how the mangroves hold the land together with their roots. Being immersed in both the environment and the community is how I come up with something helpful to paint.

Host: This episode was written and produced by me, Wesley Slover, with help from Jake Merritt. It was mixed by Trevor Richardson. Our artwork and branding was created by Audrey Haby. She’s a phenomenal collaborator and I cannot recommend her highly enough.

If you have any thoughts on collaboration, we would love to hear from you. Send us an email at the collab collection at sanctis.audio. The Collab Collection is a project of Sanctus Audio, a sound and music design studio. Hear our work at sanctis.audio. And if you could use a sonic collaborator, hit us up.