The South End: Burlington's arts district steps up when it comes to murals
This is by no means a complete listing of all murals in Burlington. And because public art is essentially a living, breathing entity, murals will come and go over the next weeks, months and years. But this list (and the accompanying map and photo gallery) should give you a pretty good start for taking your own walking and/or biking tours of all the murals Burlington has to offer.
Spaceman on Pine Street
Walking south on Pine Street from the intersection with Maple Street, one of the first striking murals along the route calls attention to The S.P.A.C.E. Gallery. Fittingly, a helmet-clad, mostly-black-and-white astronaut created in 2010 by artist Adam DeVarney practically jumps out from the brightly-painted red cinder block of the art space. Make sure to step inside the gallery when the South End Art Hop takes place Sept. 8-10, a weekend that provides a perfect opportunity to stroll along the Pine Street corridor admiring the multiple murals decorating the formerly-industrial, now art-heavy strip.
Those colorful silos
One of the most-prominent businesses along Pine Street, Dealer.com, in 2015 commissioned Vermont artist Mary Lacy to paint a pair of 32-foot-high silos positioned in front of the building. The resulting work, titled “Inside Out,” is a colorful patchwork of geometric shapes conveying a sense of energy that unfolds within an office space as well as outside on the increasingly busy stretch of Pine Street. According to a sign near the artwork, “Inside Out” is the largest public-art canvas in Vermont, totaling 3,200 square feet of painted surface area.
That building next to the farmers market
One of a couple of Pine Street murals painted by Juniper Creative Arts, “Liberation Through Imagination,” spruces up a former Burlington Street Department building. The 2021 mural that wraps around the east- and south-facing corners of the building features images of winged Black men and women as well as women and children holding out their hands as butterflies take off after they’re set free. The scenes are surrounded by bright flowers, giving “Liberation Through Imagination” a sense of serene beauty as the backdrop to images of subtle power.
AT Champlain Elementary School
The otherwise-ordinary brick exterior of Champlain Elementary School bursts into vibrant life with another of the murals on Pine Street designed by Juniper Creative Arts. “Kelis the Afronaut,” painted on the north wall of Champlain Elementary in 2020, depicts a Black warrior who, according to Burlington City Arts, represents “a symbol of joy, love, resilience, and a revolutionary spirit. A quote on the mural attributed to Albert Camus reads, “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
South End city Market
A few murals stand out along Flynn Avenue, just to the west of Pine Street. One at the front entrance to City Market, created in 2017 by the South Burlington-based Poppyclock Collective, shows classically Vermonty scenes with the coloring just slightly askew, such as a purple moose with greenish antlers. Simple, homey farmhouses surrounded by blooming flowers set within an orange background tip off the fresh produce found inside the South End grocery store that opened the same year the mural was painted.
Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com.
This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: The South End: Touring Burlington's murals
