By Cynthia Prairie

©2017 Telegraph Publishing LLC

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d Brown, owner of the Mill Tavern, told The Telegraph last night, that on Monday, using a gallon of dark colored concrete stain, he did indeed paint over the floral mural that has decorated a retaining wall at Routes 11 and 100 in Londonderry for the past three and a half years.

The colorful mural had been designed by Flood Brook Elementary students and executed by a Londonderry artist. Its destruction has left many involved in the project saddened and bewildered by Brown’s action. Brown is also an artist and displays his work at the restaurant that he has owned for 45 years. The Mill parking lot is just across the street from the retaining wall, with the restaurant sited to the west.

In a long interview, Brown said, “The relation of that wall to the setting of the Mill, the park, the river, it doesn’t make sense to call attention to the wall with all the beauty around it … The graphic was nice but it was peeling and fading and didn’t look nice. … It faces the road, the weather, the sun, the gravel, the salt. … I was doing a favor for the community.”

He then referred to Route 100’s designation as Scenic Byway and asked, “Why would we draw attention away from that?”

“It’s a wall,” he added, “not a piece of art. The setting is wrong.”

That view runs directly counter to that of Londonderry artist Garrison Buxton, who not only helped the students bring the work to life but is also an advocate for public art. The Vermont State Police are investigating Brown’s action as vandalism, since the mural was on Vermont Agency of Transportation property and Brown did not ask VTrans for permission to paint the wall.

His handiwork was also not appreciated by several members of the Londonderry Select Board, including chair Paul Gordon, who was called soon after defacement occurred.

How the mural came to be

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“The graphic was nice but it was peeling and fading and didn’t look nice. … I was doing a favor for the community. … It’s a wall, not a piece of art. The setting is wrong.”

Ed Brown

on painting over the mural



he mural was painted to cover up the unsightly and deteriorating retaining wall in front of the former Shoe Barn. The wall, which is owned by the Vermont Agency of Transportation, had been the target of not-so-artistic graffiti until 2013, when local artists, businesses, the Rotary Club, the Thrifty Attic, Londonderry town government and Flood Brook students came together to rectify the situation.

Before the student mural was painted, Buxton created a temporary mural of bold yellow, green and gray diagonal lines with a sun centerpiece. After that work was complete, Buxton and Londonderry resident Sharon Crossman went on to work with Flood Brook art teacher Casey Bailey and her students to create the mural of colorful flowers towering over homes.

Buxton, who has promoted murals in urban landscapes in New York City as well as in rural areas to brighten up structures that may have fallen on hard times with public art, then painted the wall based on the children’s artwork. In the spring of 2014, the Select Board approved the Flood Brook mural, acknowledging that the mural was to be temporary, and “will have other appearances in the future,” according to the minutes of the meeting.

But by Monday afternoon the wall was under a shroud of solid dark gray-green stain

Children’s mural gets rolled over

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n Thursday, Select Board chair Gordon told The Telegraph that he was called about the situation soon after someone spotted Brown painting over the mural. He went to the Mill Tavern to speak with Brown a little after 2 p.m.

Gordon then emailed other Select Board members about the conversation. According to Gordon, Brown called the mural “an eyesore,” and said that he did not get permission from VTrans or anyone else to paint over it and added “I’m tired of looking at it and I did the town a favor.” You can read the full text of the email here.

Gordon said he suggested that the town call the Vermont State Police, which, he said, VTrans also suggested.

While Gordon writes in his email that Brown contended that “Casey (Bailey) said it was OK to paint over it,” in his interview with The Telegraph, Brown said that he did not.

“I talked to Casey about two weeks ago and told her the mural was fading and peeling away and looks outdated. She didn’t give me any approvals. She didn’t want to get involved,” Brown said. Numerous attempts to contact Bailey were unsuccessful.

Vermont State Trooper Tyler Noyes said that while they did receive the report of vandalism, which is a misdemeanor, the VSP is still “working with the complainant right now” and no one has been charged in the case as of early Thursday afternoon. State Police ask anyone with information to call the Westminister Barracks at 802-722-4600.

Still, Gordon says, “It is VTrans’ wall, and we (the Select Board) secured the permission from VTrans. It would be my belief that both the Select Board and VTrans would have to give permission” for work to be done on the wall.

Brown said, “The town didn’t give me the courtesy of coming to me and saying ‘Ed, we’re going to paint a mural and this is what it is going to look like.’ … when Paul came and asked if I got permission I said ‘no.’ ”

People have been “shocked at the gall of someone who would intentionally deface it – a businessperson and an artist and someone in the community.”

Sharon Crossman

As for Brown’s action, Gordon said, “I was shocked. That would be the word. There are appropriate ways to address concerns that he had with the appearance of the wall and he did not follow through on the appropriate ways to handle it.” He added that plans were in the works to do touch-up and minor repairs on the mural this fall.

Speaking with The Telegraph Thursday afternoon, Buxton said, he was getting ready to “just give it a refresher. There was some bleed through from the wall.” He added that he intended to fill in the background and touch up the flowers “so that it looked nice and colorful and sharp.”

Sharon Crossman said on Thursday that she was driving down Route 11 “around midday Monday,” when she saw a man painting over the artwork using a roller and a bucket. The color of the paint, she said, was dark gray, an “Army green color.”

“I couldn’t believe my eyes, really. I didn’t know if it had been authorized or not. … I was part of getting that (project) together, getting grant money. It’s very close to my heart,” she added. Crossman said that in the student mural’s early stages, she assisted Buxton at Flood Brook “when we spent a couple of days in the school and Garrison was teaching them (the students) to make stencils and create the design.”

This week, she said she’s heard some reaction from others in Londonderry. People, Crossman said, have been “shocked at the gall of someone who would intentionally deface it – a businessperson and an artist and someone in the community.”

She recalls the difficulty of building consensus for the mural in the first place. “But now there are a lot of people who had a sense of ownership and community pride in it. It belonged to the whole community. It’s become a kind of landmark.”

Crossman added that many of those people who didn’t love the design at first, either “grew to love it or at least appreciate it.” And “people would stop by and take pictures of it and take pictures of themselves with the wall,” she said.

Buxton said his initial reaction to hearing of the damage to the mural was “surprise, (I was) dumbfounded. … I knew Ed wasn’t a fan of it. I’ve heard him express his disapproval on a number of occasions. But, he obviously felt so strongly about it, he didn’t care that he broke the law to do it. And also coming from an artist, someone who considers himself an artist. Defacing public property? Art done by school kids?”

As for a long-term solution, Select Board member George Mora said on Thursday morning, “Even if the state comes in and patches the wall, it is going to crumble. That is what concrete does. Every year – freeze thaw, freeze thaw. If they aren’t going to replace it with a dry laid stone wall, which could last for 100 years, wouldn’t it be cool to paint it to look like that?”

“I knew Ed wasn’t a fan of it. I’ve heard him express his disapproval on a number of occasions. But, he obviously felt so strongly about it, he didn’t care that he broke the law to do it. And also coming from an artist, someone who considers himself an artist. Defacing public property? Art done by school kids?”

Garrison Buxton

artist



This isn’t the first Shoe Barn mural that Brown has found unsightly. In early 2014, when Buxton was working on the first mural, according to the minutes of a select board meeting, “Ed Brown attended the meeting to express his opinion to the board that the approved design for the mural is not a good fit visually for the nature of the village.”

Brown still finds that early mural “inappropriate for Vermont,” he told The Telegraph, and if another mural is put up, he added, it would bother him. “I don’t want to see another mural there,” he said, adding that he wouldn’t even consider putting a mural of his own artwork there. “It’s not going to work whether it is my paint or anybody else’s.”

And if the graffiti returns to the blank wall? “I’ve got an extra gallon and I’ll paint over it again.”