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System #7, Jana Liptak, 2016. System #7 is composed of carefully placed lines and points interacting on a royal blue background. The work reflects Liptak’s interests in constellations, electrical circuits, and the human body. System #7 is mostly abstracted, though there is a strong sense of order. Despite the abstraction, there remains a nagging impression that the piece is figurative, or at least allusive.

System #7

Gallery 64, named for its location under Interstate 64, is an ongoing mural project. Previously known as the Peer to Pier Murals, Gallery 64 includes dozens of works by local artists. The murals are painted on concrete support piers in an enormous variety of styles. This tour mirrors a tour by Charleston's Office of Public Art and was made with the office's cooperation. To learn more visit: http://publicartcharleston.org/.

Untitled, Charles Jupiter Hamilton, 2011. Though abstracted and chaotic, Hamilton’s untitled mural appears to be a representation of downtown Charleston as seen from the south bank of the Kanawha River. Anthropomorphized boats, buildings, clouds, and other features mingle freely with brightly colored silhouettes. The exuberance of the scene conveys Hamilton’s personal feelings about the city, both positive and negative.

Untitled

Gone but Not Forgotten, Molly Must, 2011. Originally from Lobelia, WV, Must’s Gone but Not Forgotten captures a sense of memory and possibly nostalgia. The figure seated on the steps is an indeterminate age and appears lost in thought. The steps appear to lead to the door of a house, but the house behind the figure is far too small for the scene to be a faithful rendering. The strange forced perspective of the carefully stacked houses adds to the dreamlike quality of the work. The artist leaves the viewer to decide if that which is gone but not forgotten carries positive or negative connotations. 

Gone but Not Forgotten

Kanawha River Dream, Sharon Stackpole, 2011.

Kanawha River Dream

Take the Long Way Home, Ian Bode, 2011. Bode has used this title for many works over the years. This version of the piece explicitly features music notes, musicians, and a general atmosphere of rhythm, perhaps as an homage to Supertramp’s 1979 hit also named Take the Long Way Home.

Take the Long Way Home

Adena Spirit Feathers, Megan Bullock, 2011. The Adena people were a Pre-Columbian Native American culture that existed from approximately 800 BCE to 1 CE. The Adena primarily settled in Kentucky and southern West Virginia, including Charleston. This work features textiles, ceremonial objects, and other cultural components important to the Adena.

Adena Spirit Feathers

Luna Park, Jeff Pierson, 2011. Luna Park was an amusement park located in Charleston’s West Side. Designed by amusement park pioneer Frederick Ingersoll, the park operated from 1912 until 1923, when a fire ravaged the site. Despite attempts to revive the attraction, the remnants were eventually demolished and replaced with single-family homes.

Luna Park

From Here to There, Rob Cleland, 2011. This mural depicts various modes of transportation used in Charleston throughout the years. Trolley cars, classic busses, and the city’s iconic bridges all appear in this moving work.

From Here to There

Kanawha Players, Bernice Deakins, 2011. Kanawha Players is plastered in painted playbills for a variety of old and new quintessential theatre productions. The images float in front of a rich red velvet curtain reminiscent of a classic theatre stage. The name of the work references Kanawha Players, the oldest community theatre in West Virginia and also the state’s official theatre. Deakins has been involved with the organization for many years as a set designer. 

Kanawha Players

Rolling Down the River, Chris Nelson, 2011. Nelson’s Rolling Down the River appears to be a celebration of clean energy and a critique of West Virginia’s reliance on fossil fuels. At the top of the work, iron fencing in the foreground separates the viewer from a conflagration spewing smoke. In contrast, the bottom of the work depicts a tumultuous body of water moving around a water turbine. Furling yellow banners seem to be playing a double role as a symbol of power.

Rolling Down the River

A Good Place to Grow Corn, Barrie Kaufman, 2011. This work depicts a Native American woman in traditional attire. She stands in front of a small river or stream, possibly representing the Kanawha River. Behind the figure sprout copious corn stalks. The Kanawha River valley was heavily populated by Native American peoples due to the ease of agriculture. Corn was a staple of Native American diets and their primary agricultural crop. Through its depiction of Native American life, A Good Place to Grow Corn honors Charleston’s pre-European history.

A Good Place to Grow Corn

Vintage Pattern, Staci Leech Cornell, 2016. Vintage pattern utilizes a variety of plants, birds, and other symbols to create an effect similar to an embroidered textile.

Vintage Pattern

Mothman, Kelly Bryant, 2016. Featuring West Virginia’s most famous cryptid, Mothman shows its namesake floating eerily above a bridge under a full moon. Though initially sighted in 1966, the legend of Mothman gripped the public after the 1967 collapse of Silver Bridge, near Henderson, WV, when several eyewitnesses reported seeing the cryptid at the site. Though not a narrative retelling of a Mothman myth — the Silver Bridge collapse occurred during the day — Bryant’s mural evokes the general mythos that surrounds the Mothman figure. 

Mothman

Things

Celtic Pattern, Isaac Emrick, 2016. Emrick possesses a PhD in History and focuses on indigenous communities. One area of emphasis within this work involves the Eora-Dharug-Kuringai people of New South Wales. For this reason, many of his visual artworks, Celtic Pattern included, use traditional Celtic imagery and themes. However, Celtic Pattern also incorporates more modern aspects, such as a portion of the mural depicting a city.  

Celtic Pattern

Mary C. Snow, Rebecca Recco, 2016. Mary C. Snow was an important Charleston educator. She was the first Black principal after integration and was the recipient of a variety of awards including the governor’s Living the Dream Award and the Distinguished Mountaineer Award. She was also selected as part of an exchange program with Wales, becoming the first Black teacher to work in the country. Mary C. Snow West Side Elementary in Charleston is named in her honor. Recco, an educator herself, chose to paint a relatively young Snow for this portrait. Snow died in 2011 at the age of 98. 

Mary C. Snow

Gallery 64, Chelsie Bush, 2016. This piece also serves the functional purpose of detailing the locations of various art sites in Gallery 64.

Gallery 64

Octopus

One proposed site for this apocryphal tale is Big Bend tunnel in West Virginia. Stories about Henry have inspired a number of folk, blues, and country ballads, some of which date back at least a century. Walker, who owns a sign-making company, enjoyed completing this commission, as he typically works with digital rather than physical signage.

John Henry, Reaford Walker, 2016. This mural depicts the American folk hero John Henry. A freed African American, Henry worked as a steel-driver hammering in railroad spikes for new tracks. The most famous tale about Henry contends that he made a bet he could work faster than a steam-powered rock drilling machine. Though the man triumphed over the machine, Henry dropped dead immediately after winning due to the intense effort. Thanks to the work of historian Scott Nelson, we know that the more likely story is that Henry's death and that of many other African American laborers was the result of the convict labor system. Henry and other laborers were required to create holes for explosives in order to create railroad tunnels, and that led to inhaling fragments of rock that filled the air when they blasted tunnels.

John Henry

Robot and His Boy

Girl and Stars

Ursa Minora, Jesse Corlis, 2017. Appearing to push aside the shell of the concrete barrier as though it were fabric, an unsettlingly humanoid bear emerges. Adding to the strangeness of the scene, the background behind the bear is a luminous purple. Small bear cubs emerge from what appears to be the same space as the main bear at various locations around the pier. Corlis masterfully incorporated the connected drainage pipe and electric box into the work. A cub climbs the pipe while another cub hangs from the electric box, which is painted to look like a beehive. Ursa minora is latin for “the smaller bear,” or, “the little bear.”

Ursa Minora

Explore, Rosalie Haizlett, 2017. A prolific outdoorswoman, Haizlett is drawn to exploration and the natural world. This work reflects this in its exhortation to travel and see the world.

Explore

Black and White

Bees, Figures and Flowers, Nichole Westfall, 2017. 

Bees, Figures and Flowers

Civil War, Ian Bode, 2013. Ian Bode’s highly recognizable style is put to good use for this work which captures the Civil War as fought in Charleston. Union and Confederate soldiers clash on opposite banks of the Kanawha River. The figures are all faceless “passengers” — Bode’s emblematic inclusion in his work. “[The Passenger] is a vacuum into which the viewer’s identify and awareness can be filled in. The viewer is in the emotive driver’s seat, much like the Passenger.”1

Civil War

Lincoln and the Boys, Jeff Pierson, 2013. 

Lincoln and the Boys

The Battle of Charleston 1862, Charles Jupiter Hamilton, 2013. 

The Battle of Charleston 1862

Celebrating 150 Years of Music, Kelly Bryant, 2013. The name of this work likely refers to the state of West Virginia’s one hundred fiftieth anniversary, which occurred in 2013.

Celebrating 150 Years of Music

West Virginia 150 Years 1863-2013, Sharon Harms, 2013. This mural is packed with West Virginia’s state symbols, such as the Black bear (state animal), northern cardinal (state bird), and rhododendron (state flower). 

West Virginia 150 Years 1863-2013

150 Years

State, Geoff Plagemann, 2013. Similar to Sharon Harms’ nearby West Virginia 150 Years 1863-2013, State celebrates West Virginia through its state symbols. 

State

West Virginia 150, Rebecca Recco, 2013. Large block numbers on this mural contain influential actors from West Virginia history. Figures range from Union soldiers, to Abraham Lincoln, to more modern political representatives. 

West Virginia 150

The First West Virginians, Ned Savage, 2013. 

The First West Virginians

Always Free, Dustin Durham, 2013. This work references West Virginia’s state motto, “Montani Semper Liberi,” which translates to, “A Mountaineer is Always Free.”

Always Free

John Brown, Reaford Walker, 2013. Reaford, a traditional sign-maker designed this mural to resemble a historical advertisement. The work centers on John Brown, a radical abolitionist who led a raid on the federal armory in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Though Brown’s raid occurred in 1859, over a decade before the Civil War, it was indicative of the tensions and ideological struggles in Antebellum America. 

John Brown

150th

Charleston, WV, Jason Tetlak, 2018. Tetlak’s aggressively colorful paintings are found across the United States. His style involves primary colors and fonts and overlaid in a dizzying assault on the eyes. In this piece, Tetlak repeated the word Charleston to the point of near unintelligibility. However, the interplay of shapes and colors serves to create an aesthetically engaging composition, which draws the viewer in through its complexities.

Charleston, WV

Old Man Nature, Blake Wheeler, 2018. The longer one examines this Wheeler work, the more detailed it becomes. The old man, a physical representation of nature, seamlessly blends into the landscape. His clothes and hat are rocks, a waterfall cascades onto his shoulder, and trees sprout from his head. Tiny wildlife and a cabin are tucked into the landscape, accentuating the enormity of the figure. Many bubbles created by the man’s pipe dot the air. Each bubble contains its own underwater vignette, ranging from a shark circling a shipwreck, to fish passing a submerged robot head. This mural is a brilliant merging of the figurative and fantastical.

Old Man Nature

Sign

P Griddy, Melissa Doty, 2018. P Griddy was inspired by the bright watercolors with which Doty typically works. The grid of square designs includes 120 unique images and wraps fully around the pier.

P Griddy

Green Buffalo, JP Owens, 2018. Owens created this abstracted buffalo as a tribute to nearby Marshall University. Marshall’s mascot is Marco the Bison and its colors are green, Black, and white. Owens also enlisted the help of his two sons to complete the mural.

Green Buffalo

Sweet & Sour

Beach View Bound

Baseball, Charles Jupiter Hamilton, 2012.

Baseball

The Arts, Leonard Hoover, 2012. Hoover created this mural as a celebration of all the creative arts. Musical instruments, paint, theatre props, poetry books, and a huge variety of other instruments and tools flow into each other in a richly varied melange. Despite the relative chaos of the scene, a sky and buildings in the background suggest that the features occupy a real-world space. The subject of this work is appropriate for Hoover, as he creates many types of art that cross mediums and materials.

The Arts

River Fun, Sharon Harms, 2012. This scene depicts a section of Charleston’s riverfront on the Kanawha River, though it is accentuated by a whimsically large rubber duck. A hot air balloon, steamboat, and other features suggest that the work is a symbolic representation of river culture rather than a narrative scene.

River Fun

Charleston WV MMXII, Emma Plagemann, 2012. Plagemann’s mural is drawn in the style of an aerial map of Charleston. Downtown, the East Side, the West Side, and development south of the Kanawha river are all included. The “MMXII” in the piece’s title are the roman numerals for 2012, the date of this work’s creation. 

Charleston WV MMXII

Charleston Color, Ian Bode and Dave Thomas, 2012. This collaboration between Ian Bode and Dave Thomas combines the best aspects of both artists. The colorful composition, iconic Capitol Building, and inclusion of the emblematic “Passenger” figure are hallmarks of Bode’s style, while the repeated motifs, imprecise perspective, and warped, almost Cubist, faces are typical of Thomas. The work celebrates Charleston and its residents, though symbolically rather than narratively.

Charleston Color

Fish

Guitar

Four Fathers, Jeff Pierson, 2012. This work's title features a clever play on words with its four founding "forefathers." 


Four Fathers

Woman’s Club, Bernice Deakins, 2012. This mural celebrates the Woman’s Club of Charleston, a community organization in which Deakins is active.

Gallery 64

System #7

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