EPB dedicated 11 new community murals on the second side of its 10th Street substation last week with a ceremony honoring the artists and community partners.
The second set of murals faces Foster Street and highlights the history, heritage and significance of downtown Chattanooga’s Martin Luther King Boulevard area.
An outside group of community stakeholders used an anonymized judging process to select the following artists that live or work in the EPB service territory based on the artistic value and thematic relevance of their submissions.
• Laura Dahlke, The Good Guys
• Karen Estes, Voices of MLK
• Jerome Foster, Fostering a Colorful Moment in Time
• Ann Jackson and Mimi McAllister, All Created Equal
• Madison Myers, Sandy the Flower Man
• Dannita Noble, MLK Paved the Way
• La-Tesia Poole, Mahogany Songbird
• Rea Shaw, I Heart Chattanooga
• Nathaniel Stepney, Remembering Booker T. Scruggs
• Ty Swint, MLK: The Voice of Love, Peace, Justice & Equality
• Sara Tolbert, Empress of the Blues
Several of this year’s artists focused on people, stories and themes related to Chattanooga history. Madison Myers, a second-year muralist who graduated from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in May, painted a portrait of the late Sandy Bell, a local icon many knew as “The Flower Man.” Bell died in 2019.
“For years, Sandy would ride his decorated bike around downtown Chattanooga handing out flowers and smiles to strangers,” says Myers. “Many people remember their encounters with Sandy at local restaurants and bars, either from the flowers they bought from him or the conversations they had with him. I’m proud to memorialize him with this mural. He was an upbeat and generous man.”
A number of community partners made this project possible including ArtsBuild, Association of Visual Arts, Bessie Smith Cultural Center, City of Chattanooga’s Public Art Chattanooga, Chattanooga Community Kitchen, MLK Neighborhood Association, RISE Chattanooga, River City Company, The Urban League of Greater Chattanooga and UTC.
For the second year in row, all of the selected submissions were from minority or women artists, including some who were first time muralists.
This is the second year of a four-year project. EPB will take submissions to create a public mural on the third side of the substation wall in late 2022.
Source: EPB