Batavia received some artistic enhancement in the downtown area over the weekend with the unveiling of a new mural on the south wall of the Comedy Vault at 18 E. Wilson St.
The work of art, entitled “City of Good Energy,” is a 24- by-20-foot mural designed by muralist and art educator Amy Decker.
The project was made possible through the efforts of the Batavia Public Art Initiative, a subcommittee of Water Street Studios. The mural itself was painted weeks ago by community volunteers that, according to a press release from the Art Initiative, was done “in a supervised, paint-by-number format.”
Bonnie Baumgartner of Batavia, who serves as the co-chair of the Batavia Public Art Initiative, said the location of the mural is important.
“This is a gateway mural and the focus is to give an identity to your town and put it in a prominent location that is highly visible to local traffic as well as visitors that are coming and going,” she said. “Historically, Batavia’s tagline was The City of Energy, but I feel there has been so much debate within the community about changing the tagline and different things and it wasn’t super- representative of who we are today versus when we were engineering windmills.”
The mural itself was painted from Sept. 6-13 and included the work of 76 volunteers, officials said.
Baumgartner said Decker’s design was chosen based on a number of factors.
“She had a really good use of color and it really fit the vision of Batavia,” she said. “It includes bright, colorful people – lots of energy and lots of movement in the lines. It depicts images like a sun over a flowing river with community members around it and a fish jumping out of the water. It just had a lot of good energy to it.”
Decker, of Elburn, joined a group of close to 100 people who gathered in a parking lot on the south side of the Comedy Vault building on Saturday for the unveiling.
Amy Decker, of Elburn, greets visitors Saturday to the unveiling of a large mural that she designed at 18 E. Wilson St. in downtown Batavia. (David Sharos/For The Beacon-News)
“It’s incredible,” Decker said. “This is my first venture into public art. I’m a high school art teacher so everything I make stays in the classroom. It’s been awesome to see my work on a large scale.
“I knew that I wanted to start with flowing lines because they were going to emulate the good energy as well as the river that runs through Batavia,” she said. “I wanted to take that energy and flow it through the different components that are important to me about this town.”
Decker said there is an almost cartoon-like feel to the mural and said she “was looking for that” but that there were other considerations behind the design.
“We also had a team of over 70 volunteers helping to paint this, so we needed to have a design that kind of had that coloring book feel so that it would be approachable to our painters,” she said.
Building owner Michael Marconi said the mural is a great new welcoming sign for Batavia.
“We love how Water Street and the community got together to activate this wall and we love the way it turned out,” Marconi said just before the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the mural on Saturday. “This means something different to everybody and I think at the end of the day it pays homage to the people of Batavia and the good energy.”
Lora Vodicka of Batavia was one of the volunteer painters of the mural and said while she “teaches dance for a living, I love taking art classes.”
“I would not say I’m all that talented, but this made it very accessible for people to participate. It was very therapeutic,” she said of the mural project. “We signed up for shifts. We had like 10 people at a time and I met a bunch of people I’ve never met in town before. It was a really cool process and amazing how fast it got put up. It was fun driving past each day and seeing the progress that was being made.”
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
