Beneath the cars whizzing by on Jefferson Avenue, a pollinator garden is permanently in bloom.
There, muralist Linda Passeri has added life and color along the Fassnight Creek Trail where it passes under Jefferson at Bennett Street.
The 50-foot-long mural, funded through a $12,000 grant from the Hatch Foundation, shows local flora and the insects that pollinate them. Passeri outlined the mural, and last September, a team of volunteers helped to paint them in.
Two more murals are coming on the trail, Passeri said – the next one under Kimbrough Avenue, and then another under Campbell Avenue by Parkview High School.
Passeri said the murals can cover existing graffiti and deter future tagging, at least for a while.
“Generally, people who live in a place with more public art have more of a sense of community, and it brings up the quality-of-life quotient,” she said. “I think we realize this when we travel to other communities that have a lot of art.”
Springfield doesn’t have a lot of murals, compared to some cities, Passeri said – but it’s doing better, with more popping up all the time.
“Every day on the way to work, when we see art, it brings up our mood – it elevates our quality of life,” Passeri said. “Even a utilitarian object like an overpass or a walkway, if you put a little design to it, it makes it a little nicer, and it makes the community more walkable, accessible and pleasant.”
A means of attraction
Andrea Ehrhardt wrote the book on mural-making, publishing “Mural Making: An Artist’s Guide to Creating Your Dream Career” in 2021.
Ehrhardt said she has brought in six figures from mural-making for a decade now. She teaches the craft to other artists through her online Artist Academy.
Her work can be found throughout Springfield, including the monarch butterfly wings at the corner of Walnut Street at South Avenue.
With a painting degree from Missouri State University, Ehrhardt refined her mural craft by working for Bass Pro Shops, painting everything from customized bathroom signs to the wall art located behind animal displays.
Her current project is installing raccoons around Rogersville, which boasts that it is the raccoon capital of the world. For $200, Ehrhardt will design and install a 2-by-3-foot raccoon on the outside of a business. At O’Reilly Auto Parts, Roger the Raccoon holds a wrench, while he holds an apple at Apple Market and strikes a yoga pose at a local studio.
“Aside from being memorable, it attracts people to your business,” she said.
Two of Ehrhardt’s murals are inside engineering firm Toth and Associates Inc. Kevin Grinder, director of marketing, said an Ehrhardt commission in a conference room depicts the major services the company performs.
“It’s a way to add some fun and some color and represent what we do on a daily basis, and it really brightens up the room,” he said.
Grinder said people spend most of their waking life at an office, and the environment ought to be appealing.
“The murals help create a visual environment to give it a little bit more of a personalized feel, so it’s more than just an office,” he said.
Phyllis Ferguson, owner of the Rockwood Motor Court on Route 66, commissioned Passeri to paint a black-and-white highway shield in her parking lot.
Travelers visit from all over the world, she said, and the Instagram-ready spot has proven to be popular.
“It’s a good investment,” Ferguson said. “Not every person who comes into the court and takes a picture of the shield stays with us, but when it gets shared hundreds or thousands of times across the social media landscape, it’s great advertising for us.”
Chris Jarratt, chief creative officer and partner at Revel Advertising, doesn’t need to be sold on the value of murals in advertising. His company is working with the Oasis Hotel & Convention Center to improve wayfinding with murals. He said local muralist Meg Wagler is currently at work painting images at major entry points within the hotel – a flamingo, a macaw and palm fronds.
This takes the concept a step further than simply hoping people will take photos in front of images for social shares, he said.
“If you think about it from an experiential standpoint, it’s a way to further your positioning and bring about the essence of what your experience or product or brand is,” he said. “It can be a good exercise to make sure you’re maximizing your investment.”
Quality of place
Rusty Worley, executive director of the Downtown Springfield Association, said murals are a great addition to any downtown.
Worley said some downtown murals offer sudden surprises or brighten alleyways, like Sculpture Walk Springfield’s Alleyscapes installation found in the back of Walnut Street’s Hotel Vandivort and Landers Theatre, or like Wagler’s large, street-level piece on the southwest corner of Park Central Square that implores its audience in colorful letters to “Make Something Where You Are.”
“Sometimes it’s the unexpected places that really make art fun,” Worley said. “Maybe we can add even more murals and really make Springfield stand out.”
Tim Rosenbury, director of quality of place initiatives for the city of Springfield, said murals can be a difference-maker in a community.
“Beautiful, well-maintained murals really can stimulate a place,” he said.
He said as a public body, the city has a responsibility to the people who dwell there or visit.
“We have a quarter of a million people come to the city every single day,” Rosenbury said. “We have to take almost everyone into consideration.”
Rosenbury said murals offer an opportunity for people to begin to spot the good all around them.
“As I think about quality of place, it’s great to have infrastructure – things that work and that make it possible to live in a community,” he said. “I also look for things that inspire – that make living in a community worthwhile. Good art does that.”