Lexington welcomed four outdoor murals this summer, all along the Minuteman Bikeway, in an effort to revitalize the town’s business districts post-COVID-19.
A 2019 report found the Minuteman Bikeway is one of Lexington’s greatest opportunities to boost business. The town installed these murals to catch bikers’ attention and draw them into the business districts they ride through. The murals, which cost $100,000, are funded through former president Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act, which included a stimulus bill to aid the nation’s recovery from the pandemic.
“Murals are a great way to build communities but also provide these businesses that were affected by COVID a stronger revenue model and gain that foot traffic from the Bikeway,” Jay Abdella, Lexington’s senior economic development coordinator, told the Observer.
The paintings celebrate the town’s history, diversity, and evolution. One of the murals covers the pillars that support the back of the Lexington Depot Museum in the Center. The other three span the backs of three different businesses on Massachusetts Avenue in East Lexington.
The town chose to focus on East Lexington for these murals because that business district has been disproportionately affected by COVID, a 2021 report shows.
“The murals are a way to attract people and say, ‘there’s something here worth looking at’,” Abdella said.
The paintings in East Lexington are history-based, Melissa Stratton-Pandina, one of the artists who worked on the murals in East Lexington, told the Observer. She and her business partner, Gabriela Sepulveda Ortiz, aimed to show how ordinary people led, and continue to lead, “extraordinary lives” in Lexington.
“Lexington has had all these different faces, and instead of trying to tell a disparate story, we tried to sew it all together and focus on all these wonderful characters that you may not know,” Stratton-Pandina said.
The first mural is located behind Battle Road Bikes at 135 Mass. Ave. It depicts several “change agents” such as Paul Revere, Captain Parker, and Peter Tulip, the son of Margaret Tulip, a slave who sued for her freedom. People can learn from those characters’ resilience when facing challenges today, Stratton-Pandina said.
“They lived through their time, responded to the stimuluses of their time, and you’re just gonna do the same thing,” she said. “The more you take these special people in history and realize they’re just human beings, the more it frees us up for action.”
Stratton-Pandina and Sepulveda Ortiz’s second mural is behind Busa Wine & Spirits at 131 Mass. Ave. That painting honors the immigrants who have “added to the cloth of the American story,” Stratton-Pandina said.
The artists featured Lexington residents who immigrated to the US on that mural. They interviewed community members who came to town from other countries and held photoshoots with them so they could accurately portray them on the wall.
Stratton-Pandina and Sepulveda Ortiz’s public outreach didn’t end there. They held a ‘painting party’ in May where they invited community members to help paint on the material they later installed on the backs of the buildings to create their murals.
“It’s wonderful to be able to create something with the support of the community that they’ll enjoy for a long time afterward,” Stratton-Pandina said. “Those interactions are always golden.”
Stratton-Pandina and Sepulveda Ortiz used that mural-making technique on two of their three murals. The technique involves painting five-by-ten foot sections of polytab fabric and gluing that material onto a wall to create a mural. Stratton-Pandina said polytab murals are usually more expensive and take longer to make, but they last around 40 years. Murals that are painted directly onto a wall last up to 10 years.
The third mural Stratton-Pandina and Sepulveda Ortiz painted depicts how the town has evolved from an agricultural community to a place where technology booms. It includes a painting of a train as a nod to the bike path, which used to be a railroad.
The artists put dozens of hours of work into painting the polytab material at their studios before the summer. Once those paintings were ready, it took them just over two weeks to install two of the murals and hand paint the other.
Further up the bike path in Lexington Center lives the fourth mural. That painting, which is located across the pillars on the backside of the Lexington Depot Museums, is hand painted by artist Kit Collins.
Creating a mural in the Center presented a unique set of challenges, Abdella said.
“In the Center, we have to be a little bit more conscious of the historical component to make sure the integrity of the pillars were being respected,” he said.
Collins wanted the mural to tell the story of Lexington’s past, present, and nod to the future. She included motifs that represent Indigenous and contemporary agriculture, Colonial-era industry, and the Revolutionary War. She also painted the music notation for “Ode to Joy,” which is widely taught in Lexington Public Schools.
Movement and travel is another theme depicted in Collins’ mural. She included foot steps, dog prints, turkey tracks, cyclists, and the train in her mural to honor the railroad’s past and current usages.
She also included a silhouette of the Munroe Brook to “evoke a sense of ecosystem” and honor the watershed that Lexington is situated near.
The town plans to keep Collins’ mural up for five years and then restore the pillars to their original condition.
“My goal with the mural was just to be a visual celebration of the community,” said Collins. “I hope that having the mural there causes people to slow down when they’re traveling by it and take an extra minute in a space they’re very accustomed to.”
All the murals are up and ready for people to enjoy. The town will host ribbon-cutting ceremonies to celebrate the completion of the paintings in the coming weeks.