A slab gray concrete retaining wall on the east side of Route 1 at Mount Vernon’s Residences of North Hill has been transformed, bursting with brightly colored local images. A bluebird, goldfinch, cardinal, squirrel, red fox and more almost jump off the wall in a new mural.
On June 24, Mount Vernon Supervisor Dan Storck, artist Adam Kidder and supporters cut a red ribbon on the new 155-foot-long mural along the paved trail from the highway up a gently sloping hill to North Hill Park.
Kidder chose images reflecting the local area, including food options along the corridor like pupusas and donuts. An opportunistic black crow even snaps up a donut on a section of the mural. “All have local relevance,” he said.
He featured birds that frequent nearby Huntley Meadows Park and a red fox that visits North Hill Park. A local dog, Lincoln, that came by with his owner while the artist worked, seems to almost smile at onlookers. Images of pickleball and basketball reflect the sports that people in the community play there, and in one panel, an enterprising fox carries a pickleball paddle in its mouth.
Over a two-month period, Kidder painted the mural on the bare wall. Sprinkled throughout are images of people, but they are not real people, by design. Kidder said that when creating it, when a passerby said one
A youngster playing paddleball on the 155-foot-long mural.
“We can never have enough art,” Storck told the 25-person gathering. “Art makes life worth living and we know that public art matters.” Storck and Kidder thanked the many people and organizations involved, including the Mount Vernon District Arts and Culture Council, Arts Fairfax and the Southeast Fairfax Development Corporation.
Liz Hagg came out of retirement to celebrate and explain that this was the fourth public art project of Paint It, Fairfax, a program she once managed. Paint It, Fairfax is aimed at building vitality in Fairfax County’s commercial revitalization districts through “creative placemaking efforts,” notes their website. “The best murals can nurture the distinctive qualities of a community or place and can serve to celebrate community members or local establishments, while also being inviting to visitors,” it says.
Cathy Hosek with the Mount Vernon Arts and Culture Council told the group, “We are celebrating more than a mural, but also the community. It reflects a neighborly spirit.”
Kidder, who teaches art at Lake Braddock High School, said that “I didn’t just make it. I got to know local personalities and their schedules.” He shared a few questions he was asked as he painted, like “Why is there paint on your hands?” “Did you do this all by yourself?” A teenager queried, “Who is paying for this?” On a rough day, one youngster on a scooter brought him a bottle of water.
When one young observer called one of the wildlife images a lemur, Kidder said that that is one of the beauties of art. “We all have an interpretation.”
The Residences at North Hill, 7201 Richmond Highway, in the Hybla Valley area, were built on the land of a former mobile home park, Storck said. Former Mount Vernon Supervisor, the late Gerry Hyland, brought the community together, Storck offered, and developed the complex as one-third market rate townhouses, one-third affordable workforce housing and one-third public park. The park’s large, leafy trees loomed on top of the hill in the background.
While these arts-minded visitors slowed down and contemplated the mural, Route 1’s unceasing stream of traffic zoomed by the seemingly endless strip malls, fast food joints, gas stations and parking lots. U.S. 1 stretches 2,370 miles from Key West, Florida, north to Fort Kent, Maine, at the Canadian border.