By Taylor Boyd
A mural of the lake at Fairy Stone State Park has found its permanent home at the park after being shuffled around Patrick County for over three decades.
The Patrick County Historical Society gave the more than seven-foot-wide mural to the park in December after months of discussion.
Adam Layman, park manager, said the society reached out to the park about displaying the piece.
“It’s a pretty large piece to store and display and they thought the best thing for it was to have it home, or at least where it was depicted, so we can have it up for park guests to see it,” he said, adding the park was happy to take the mural.
Layman said the artist, medium, and exact date of the art are currently unknown, but “the Historical Society believes the piece was created in the 1950s.”
He added that the mural would be displayed in either the Park’s Fayerdale Hall Conference Center or The Lodge.
“We’re going to have to do some work to the frame to get it remounted. We’re working on that to get it all squared away,” he said, adding there are no plans to have restoration work done on the painting. “It’s survived this long and like most things of that age, it has the marks on it that tells the story of it being around for a while. I think it’s nice like it is and lets folks know that it’s not a museum piece that was kept behind glass forever,” he said.
Chrissy Petruncio, office manager at the park, said the painting was “originally in the Bank of Patrick County, right next to the library”, and was rescued by Carolyn Harnsberger, a local art history advocate and former director of the Patrick County Department of Social Services, who “wanted to get it into the right hands.”
Harnsberger said she first saw the painting when the bank was being renovated.
“I drove by the bank one day and they were remodeling it and I saw the painting, what I considered to be an artifact, behind the building with some other things. I asked about them, and they were all going to be discarded,” she said.
“As the history nut I was considered at the time, I said ‘those would be wonderful in the county building.’ They would not let me hang them when we moved into the building,’” Harnsberger said, adding officials wouldn’t even let her hang the picture in the first floor of the Patrick County Administration Building.
Because of that, Harnsberger said she moved the painting around for years before she was able to get it displayed in Skipper’s Seafood.
“I was friends with Skip Sharpe and I said ‘Skip, please hang one of the paintings. It’s the Fairy Stone Park and you all used to have a restaurant at Fairy Stone Park,’” Harnsberger recalled, and added that Sharpe received permission from the building’s owner to hang the picture in the restaurant, albeit in a back room away from public view.
When the business sold, Harnsberger said she wanted to recover the painting because she feared it would be trashed while the restaurant was being remodeled. Harnsberger called the park and John Reynolds, of the Historical Society, to help save the painting.
“I said ‘please John, let’s figure out what to do with that picture. It’s in bad shape, but let’s try and save it one more time.’ In the end, I took my truck one day and was carrying it to the Historical Society, and it started raining while I had it on the back of my truck. So, it was in even worse shape when I got it up to the history museum,” Harnsberger said, adding she has spent more than 30 years trying to save the painting before finding it a permanent home.
