A little chill and rain didn’t stop the Greater Augusta Arts Council and Destination Augusta from celebrating the first iteration of its first Promenade & Paint art project, Wednesday morning.
“Ours” is a mural highlighting downtown Augusta, posted on the wall at 802 Broad St. Local artist Baruti Tucker designed the mural, and painted it alongside 100 fellow Augustans over a year and half.
Representatives from both Destination Augusta and the Art Council joined Tucker, District 1 Commissioner Jordan Johnson and Michael Wolff of Augusta Adventure Tours in cutting the ribbon on the painting, now on display at the corner of Broad and Eighth streets.
The painting features key landmarks, such as both the Miller and Imperial theaters, the 6th Street Railroad Bridge and the James Brown statue.
“I probably have a story about every place on this wall,” said Commissioner Johnson. “I know it’s called ‘Ours’ because so many people helped create it, but… for me, it’s ‘ours’ because this is Augusta, and Augusta is ours.”
Promenade & Paint, the collaborative public art initiative coordinated by Destination Augusta and the Arts Council, invites both residents and visitors of the Garden City to participate in the city’s public art scene, first by going on a curated tour of the city’s public art, then participating in a mural painting workshop and finally contributing to pieces for display throughout the city.
“So with this first one, with this experience, we asked Baruti to kind of be inspired by Augusta, and he just ran with it,” said Heater Dunaway, gallery and public art director with the Arts Council. “He was thinking of all the elements that, for him were very sentimental, the Miller, the Imperial, the Augusta Common, the James Brown statue, were all very close to his heart, and I think it really resonated with a lot of people that took the tour.”
For Tucker, a native of Staten Island, N.Y. who moved to Augusta more than a decade ago, “Ours” represents a kind of evolution of the city since he came to know it, and the sense that something in Augusta is building.
“That something at some point was also myself,” said Tucker, whose wife, Denise Tucker, is the president of the Greater Augusta Arts Council. “It’s really funny how my life is parallel to the [city’s] progression in terms of business, in terms of creativity, in terms of where I am.”
The theme for the next two public art pieces on the horizon via Promenade & Paint, says Dunaway, will be music, and the mural following that will be focused on nature.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering general reporting for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com
