Paint Branch Bridge Mural Unveiled

College Park has just unveiled a massive new public artwork — a mural underneath Route One that celebrates Lakeland heritage. Over the spring and summer, CPAE helped plan a huge undertaking, with partners at the City University Partnership, Lakeland Community Heritage Project, MNCPPC, College Park Community Center, Office of Community Engagement, and more.

You may have already seen the colorful lights that edge the bridge over the Paint Branch stream, between Campus Drive and Lakeland Road. Underneath that bridge is a well-traveled foot and bike path, the Paint Branch Trail, and now a new mural underneath the bridge spans the width of Route One — over forty feet in width — incorporating images from the natural environment as well as portraits of figures from Lakeland History. Several lead artists, including University of Maryland art student Sierra Sigmone, MNCPPC artist Bonnie Simonds, David Silva, and Eleanor Roosevelt High School teacher Christine Wilkin, led a team local area high school students and recent high school graduates including Jazmyne Brock, Parker Brock, Rebekah Chung, Rachel Hithon, Victoria Lewis, and Jamie Rogers-Sites, who completed the mural under the bridge over the summer.

All great community art starts with a big idea. At College Park Arts Exchange, we were very excited to take part in planning a mural of such amazing scope. Sitting around a table at City Hall with a group of community leaders led to sitting around another long table in the Lakeland Room at College Park Community Center, looking at the amazing historical photographs brought by Maxine Gross from the Lakeland Community Heritage Project archives. Soon, we hit upon the plan of selecting a handful of those images and foregrounding them against a natural background.

Over the summer, student artists had to scrape the wall and prepare it, line out the elements, mix up their own paint colors, and of course, paint the images onto the wall, all while braving mosquitoes, heat and thunderstorms! With artists working full time for over six weeks, the mural is now complete.

If you have never walked the Paint Branch Trail, the completion of this mural should urge you to do so without delay. You can learn more about the mural on the Lakeland website, https://lakelandchp.com.