[B]URLINGTON — The artist behind a now-controversial Church Street mural says he is not opposed to modification of the piece but maintains that outright removal would be a “sad outcome.”
Pierre Hardy, 56, had not previously addressed the wrangling over the “Everybody Loves a Parade” mural but agreed to discuss it in an email exchange with VTDigger.
The mural, which depicts figures from Burlington’s history, was done in 2012 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Samuel de Champlain’s arrival in the Champlain Valley in 1609. Last October, Burlington activist Albert Petrarca spray painted the words “Off the Wall” on the mural as a political statement. He said he was attempting to show the lack of racial and historical representation in the mural.
The mural works as a timeline, with de Champlain’s likeness at the beginning of the artwork on Church Street. It then depicts figures like Elvis Presley, a Ben & Jerry’s storefront and Sens. Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders. Other contemporary figures like popular Vermont singer Grace Potter and Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger, with his daughter, Li Lin hoisted on his shoulders, fill out the far end of mural.
Petrarca’s statement likely kick-started a community movement that now has many calling for the mural to change, and some calling for its removal.
During Monday’s Burlington City Council meeting, every public commenter who addressed the mural called for a change. Many said the mural is racist because it doesn’t accurately depict the American Indians who were in Vermont before de Champlain and ignores several other historical figures and people.
In his responses to VTDigger, Hardy described the process that went into designing and completing the mural, the figures represented and the possibilities for its future.
“Everyone Loves A Parade” is the product of a tremendous community effort, said Hardy, an accomplished artist who lives in Quebec, adding the mural was not the “result of shallow, frivolous and unsubstantiated work, know-how and resources.”
He said the process was tedious and took dozens of participants about two years of work to conceptualize and complete the mural. Three artist collaborators worked alongside him on the mural, which stretches the entire length of Leahy way from Church Street to the Marketplace Parking Garage.
The mural design involved no racial profiling, Hardy said, and there was not an effort to specifically check off a list of identities to include. Rather, the mural is “based on people,” he said.
“The people that ended up in the painting are the result of a long and exhaustive research process that was conducted in order to identify builders, doers, entrepreneurs, champions, and recognizable citizens of Vermont,” Hardy said.
The abundance of white faces on the mural is merely a reflection of Vermont’s demographics, Hardy said. “If the mural is white so is 2010 Vermont, my friend.”
But the mural — privately funded at a cost of roughly $100,000 — was never intended to tell Vermont’s whole story.
Hardy said more murals are needed in Burlington’s downtown to tell the whole story, and that he remains open to additions to the existing mural. A clear space exists for a new mural on the opposite wall, which remains largely blank, Hardy said.
“Notice that many of the characters in the original mural are facing, waving or addressing that very blank wall location, now it only needs a responding painting as if the two walls are actually talking to each other,” Hardy said.
The opposite wall is “proof of the project’s genuine intentions for flexibility, for extensions,” Hardy said.
Hardy said he retired from his work as a muralist in 2014. He has done hundreds of mural paintings in his career and says he will remain an advocate for the artform. However, he said his retirement plans “absolutely do not involve mural work”. He pointed out that controversy over art is nothing new, and extends even to some of the most recognizable artistic feats.
“Look at the Eiffel tower history of decades of protest,” Hardy said. “If the rulers of the time were spineless, we wouldn’t have an Eiffel tower today.”
Hardy said he is “grateful to have had this unique chance of creation,” and still has hundreds of positive testimonials sent to him about the piece.
The mural will remain untouched for the time being. At Monday’s City Council meeting, councilors voted to advance a measure that asks the city attorney, Eileen Blackwood, to report back to the council on the legal ramifications of its removal, but does not take any further action that would begin the removal process.
Many councilors indicated they would like to see a new community process that would weigh options to make the mural more inclusive.
Those options are yet to be determined. The council plans to take action on creating a mural task force after Blackwood gives her report on the mural’s removal in mid-March.
