The Cave Paintings

Rosemary Street Parking Deck

A year after the Wallace Parking Deck was built on Rosemary Street I got a call from Cal Horton, the town manager. The deck was a beautiful new facility. Unfortunately, many townspeople were not comfortable with it yet and it wasn’t being used any where near capacity. Cal told me that one of the reasons people were giving for avoiding it was that it seemed dark and cavernous. He asked,” Can you do anything to make it feel less like a cave?”

The instant he said the word “cave” a brainstorm hit me. I would not try to make the parking deck seem less like a cave at all. Instead, I’d try to make the deck seem more like a cave. The idea was to fill the parking deck with murals that resembled the prehistoric cave paintings found at Lascaux, in France. Since examples of cave paintings have been discovered all over the world I also borrowed ideas from other ancient cultures. They all show what life might have been like for a mythical tribe of my invention. Long forgotten artists from Africa to Alaska contributed (so did a bunch of local volunteers). The murals show aspects of life ranging from hunting and gathering to childcare and games; things we also concern ourselves with today.

I got another idea from different ancient source, Trajan’s Column in Rome. The sculpted reliefs that spiral around it tell of the Emperor’s years of conquest. Since parking decks also have a spiral structure I thought it might work to tell the story of my imaginary nomadic people as they moved through the cycle of their year.

By putting the murals in the light wells I tried to draw attention to the fact that this really was a very well designed facility. The truth is I didn’t think the parking deck was lightless and dank at all and I liked my cave idea primarily because it made fun of the situation. I’ve always enjoyed telling this story too, because it is an example of solving a problem by making light of it.

Michael Brown