On the brick exterior outside the offices of the Northampton Media Group on 15 Hampton Ave., colorful illustrations of musicians interact amid a background of green rolling hills and a orange-yellow sun.
It matches a similar mural painting in a nearby tunnel entrance that connects Pleasant Street to the Armory Street Parking Lot, encircled by Thornes Marketplace and numerous downtown storefronts.
Both murals were painted by Sabrina Dorsainvil, a Boston artist and illustrator commissioned by the city’s Arts and Culture Department. The mural, which joins several others already existing in the lot, is part of a larger effort by city to add more public art installations downtown, reflecting Northampton’s status as a cultural hub, according to Director of Arts and Culture Brian Foote.
“I have a vision of surrounding the Armory Street lot with murals on all the buildings in the back, so it would be a ‘mural gallery,'” Foote said. “I have to work with stakeholders within the community to realize other people’s visions as well, but that’s my personal vision.”
Since January 2022, using a mix of state grants, private donations, and other funding sources, the city has supported the creation of several murals across downtown, including a prominent mural on the Armory Street side of Thornes depicting a racoon, done by Miami artist Ernesto Maranje, and a mural of children’s book characters behind R. Michelson Galleries by artists Kim Carlino and Ramiro Davaro-Comas.
Foote said the Armory Street lot made an ideal location for showcasing public artwork because many people from outside the city often go there, either to access the parking garage to enter Thornes or to attend the Tuesday Farmer’s Market during the warmer months of the year.
“I just like the idea of anybody engaging with Northampton, their first engagement is this wow factor of all this art that’s on the back of all the buildings in that area,” Foote said.
Beyond Armory Street, murals can be seen painted along Center Street, JFK Middle School and on several electrical boxes downtown. While publicly-owned buildings are rather easy for the Arts and Culture Department to commission, painting on privately-owned buildings can be slightly more of a process, Foote said.
“It’s a different engagement because you have to deal with building ownership, and they have lots of things to say because it’s their facade, their building,” he said. “The first thing I do is I try to identify where I’d want to put up a mural, and the next piece is, is the property owner available to talk, to be amenable to work with us to put a mural on their building and to see if they’re excited about it.”
In addition to commissioning artists like Dorsainvil and Maranje, Foote said the city is also committed to supporting local artists. For Dorsainvil’s murals, members of Northampton High School’s National Arts Honors Society worked alongside her, learning about the process of mural creation along the way.
“They’re paid internships basically, so they can learn the process from start to finish,” Foote said. “We’re trying to make sure the next generation knows, because not everybody has the same skill set to do large scale murals.”
Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.
