The Puzzle Pieces, 1999

Varsity Theater & Tarheel Bookstore, Franklin Street

"In 1999 the Varsity Theatre alley was becoming a problem area for downtown.

Since pedestrians there are largely hidden from public view, it was an attractive place for young "taggers" to paint graffiti and a lot of it was building up there. The taggers had almost always left my murals alone, however, so we thought a mural in there might help.

The location presented some real challenges. There were many square feet to fill and, as usual, a tight budget. The student volunteers had to be given something they could execute at any skill level. The alley is narrow and the viewing distance minimal so standing between the opposing walls was extremely claustrophobic.

I decided to paint blue sky on the walls. A sky painting would seem to open up the cramped space. Sky is easy and inexpensive to do, and the volunteers could easily paint clouds.

When I realized that this plan would mean painting a Carolina blue and white mural I decided to change the plan and paint one of the walls (on the Durham side of the alley) a dark "Duke" blue. That would make that side into a night sky. With this, the painting then became a sort of a yin yang mural, containing day and night, Carolina and Duke. To emphasize the concept of interrelatedness I painted an interlocking jigsaw puzzle piece pattern over the entire mural. I also liked the idea of pairing a normally small thing like a puzzle with a huge thing, like the sky.

To further develop the idea I instructed my assistants to paint puzzle pieces on buildings all over town, like scattered random pieces that had not been fitted into the puzzle yet. To this day I'm not sure where they all are. I do know that from the most constricted location I ever worked came the largest project I ever did, covering the whole town."

Michael Brown

Courtesy of The Chapel Hill News, December 22, 2007

This mural is suffering from dirt, non-matching repairs, few areas of poor paint adhesion, and is slightly faded. It would benefit from a pressure wash and extensive touch up is needed to cover up various patches of graffiti.

Total cost for restoration: $2700.00

Amount raised to date: $20.00

Donors:

Meg McGirk