Bull Mountain Arts (BMA) formally unveiled a 24-foot permanent installation titled “Arts and Flowers: A Painting Montage of Native Virginia Flora” in the community room of Patrick & Henry Community College’s (P&HCC) Stuart site on Thursday, July 3.
The installation includes 26 paintings created by a dozen BMA members.
BMA is a nonprofit arts organization formed in 1998 to promote community art, teach art, and encourage people to create art.
While the idea for the project originated in January, BMA President Lora Mahaffey said members began painting in April.
“The idea kind of came around the holidays, but we decided to postpone that because everybody was so busy. Angie [Brown, P&HCC site facilitator] and I were talking about it last year, like we need some art on this wall. She’s like, ‘Okay, why don’t you just do it,’ and I’m like, ‘Okay, we’re going to do it,’” she said.
After discussing the project with the group, Mahaffey and another member developed the idea of a collage featuring Virginia wildflowers.
“And just people pick what they want and tell them it’s a certain style. It doesn’t have to be botanically correct, but just, you know, you get the feel of it,” she said. “We got a magazine and started cutting out all of these flower pictures and making these different scenarios about what it would look like. Since we had such a long wall, we wanted it to be at least half the size of the wall.”
Mahaffey then presented the collage idea and format to the other BMA members, who each selected a flower to paint.
“There’s a couple of repeats in there, but everyone has different styles, so it really doesn’t feel like there’s anything that’s the same. The flowers, although they’re not botanically drawn, they’re identifiable for what they are. It sort of had an organic thing because we just said tell us what flowers you’re doing so it’s not repeated too much, and we tried to use these really great paints with rich pigments,” she said.
Flowers depicted in the installation include blue irises, sunflowers, black-eyed Susans, ghost pipe orchid, blackberry brambles, daisies and others.
In addition to the various flowers, Mahaffey said there are also paintings of bees, butterflies and skinks included, as they are pollinators.
“All flowers need pollinators, right?” she said, adding that she chose to paint a buckeye butterfly, which is located at the center of the piece, because it pollinates almost every flower in the collage.
The installation is slightly offset from the wall, mounted on a 24-foot-long French cleat that Mahaffey’s husband, David, built.
“It’s a piece of wood that’s got a 45-degree angle to it and you mount that on the wall, and he’s got sections that he put together that he put the opposite French cleat on,” she said.
As a result, Mahaffey said the installation can be removed in sections and relocated by P&HCC in the future if desired.
“Because it’s theirs to do with what they want. Hopefully they’ll keep this here for a while,” she said.
Mahaffey said BMA decided to gift the installation to P&HCC because the college is the county’s educational hub.
“We always get so much out of it, and so we wanted to give back to the community in appreciation in having this college here,” she said.
Future Projects
Mahaffey said BMA is partnering with local leaders to enhance the Mayo River Rail Trail through an Appalachian Gateway Community Initiative (AGCI) grant.
“Part of that is putting art in the park, and so I’ve been working with doing that as well. One of the requirements is a mural, so we’re going to do a small mural, but we’re going to do a callout for the art students at the high school and have them do the mural and we’re going to mentor them,” she said.
BMA also plans to create large luminaries made from repurposed gas tanks that will be lit from dusk to dawn.
“Standard Oil was the first oil company here that the Clarks had, and it was right on the river, right on the trail. It’s like a full circle thing—that we take something that somebody’s throwing away and upcycle that thing that came from the gas and the oil and put it back on the trail as something beautiful and useful,” she said.
Mahaffey said the group also plans several art shows, including one in partnership with P&HCC’s art department at the main campus when the fall semester begins.
“We’ll have about five artists there doing that, and then one of those artists is going to have a solo show later in the year there. We have a lot of fingers in different pies right now,” she said.
BMA also plans to host an open house at Calliope during the Apple Dumpling Festival and will organize several pop-up events when the Stuart Farmers’ Market is closed later this year.
For more information, visit Facebook.com/BullMountainArts.
