Broomfield ARTery provides a corridor of public art to community
Jul. 21—As part of an ongoing effort by Broomfield to inspire wonder and curiosity within the community, the city has developed a creative corridor through murals, projects and more.
"In 2021, the City Council handed down a task to the arts and history division, to look at the yearly priorities they had set out. One of those priorities was to support the creative economy," said Megan Gilby, Broomfield's arts and history manager. "We looked at the priorities, and one of the main tasks that was part of that priority was to create a creative corridor in Broomfield. So we sat down and tried to figure out what this would look like for Broomfield, what resources do we have? What's the vision here? And that's where we started."
Since the initial vision two years ago, the creative corridor known as the ARTery has blossomed into a winding trail full of public art installations connecting The Field and Broomfield Commons open spaces.
Among the art installations along the trail are a series of sidewalk murals, "Wild Water Neighbors" by Jennifer Chaparro and Camie Rigirozzi, "Pollinator Path and Bee-longing Phrases" by Katarina Vuletich and Page Brown, and "Emergence" by Ratha Sok and Jennifer Vazquez.
Newly installed on the ARTery is the Little Houses project. The houses are small elevated boxes, each containing rotating art and history exhibits. Four of the houses were installed along the first phase of the ARTery trail and one at the Broomfield Depot Museum.
The art inside the Little Houses will contain artifacts from Broomfield's sister city of Ueda, Japan, and twin city of Broomfield, U.K. The last house near the Depot Museum will act as a little free library.
At the end of the ARTery, near the baseball fields in the Broomfield Community Park, a wooden building has also been transformed by public art.
"I'm always constantly inspired by the nature around here in Colorado, I'm just amazed by the wildflowers and how colorful everything is. I just think it's amazing how much beauty and how much color can come from nature," said Stacey Reynolds, one of the mural artists.
Reynolds designed and painted the mural "Broom Brightly," a bright and colorful piece full of wildflowers.
"I want to create art that gives people positive things," she said. "So for this mural, I thought, what if we could look like you're standing in a field of wildflowers and I think people take inspiration by walking through the wildflowers and I wanted to bring that to a public city space with kids and everything that might not necessarily have the wildflowers all around."
One mural was painted by Kate Fitzpatrick, and the design of the mural was voted on by the community. "The Broomfield Dragon" depicts a whimsical flying dragon surrounded by butterflies.
"We've all been through a lot in the last couple of years, and I really wanted to create a mural that would just feel cheerful and positive for everyone," Fitzpatrick said.
"I'm so grateful to Broomfield, this was my first mural and it had been a longtime goal of mine," she added. "Broomfield is really supportive of artists and this has already opened a lot of other doors for me and I really appreciate them doing that."
Another mural, "I Spy Colorado Wildlife," was designed and painted by Julie Kitzes and Samantha Pascavis and depicts an array of Colorado animals. The mural is designed to be interactive, and viewers can play along by trying to spot all the species on the wall.
"We are very appreciative of the community and how a lot of people were really supportive. They were fun to be around and I had a lot of fun getting to teach a lot of people on different animals they had never heard of," Pascavis said. "And we haven't really had a lot of murals where the community that we were doing it in was super involved in it, but this one, a lot of people were really interested in what we were doing so that was probably the most enjoyable part next to actually painting for me."
For more information about the ARTery, visit broomfieldvoice.com/artery.
