A colorful new mural on a water tank overlooking the Mayo River Rail Trail has become the trail’s newest piece of public art.
The project, proposed and supported by Bull Mountain Arts (BMA), was completed earlier this month by Roanoke muralist Jon Murrill. The mural features a child’s hand reaching into the Mayo River toward a trout, along with a dragonfly, wildflowers, grasses and other natural elements.
Bull Mountain Arts President Lora Mahaffey said the idea began about two years ago during a conversation with Patrick County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Rebecca Adcock.
“We were looking at the tower and she said, ‘Ah, I just want to do something with the tower, like paint it.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I was thinking about murals and how cool that would be,'” Mahaffey said.
Although early discussions with the property’s owner stalled, Mahaffey never let go of the idea.
“It was always in my head, and I just never forgot about it because I walk on the trail a lot,” she said.
The project moved forward after a longtime Bull Mountain Arts supporter agreed to fund it and encouraged Mahaffey to contact Murrill, who previously painted the goddess mural on the side of Pickle & Ash in Patrick Springs.
“I loved it and I wanted him to do it,” Mahaffey said.
Before work began, Bull Mountain Arts members and Town of Stuart officials met with Murrill to discuss ideas for the design.
Murrill “went away with all of these notes and ideas and a lot of questions and came back with his original designs and got feedback from us as well at that point. We just loved what he did,” Mahaffey said.
Mahaffey said the organization also viewed the project as a learning opportunity.
“I wanted to raise the bar for us so that we could do it here in the future and do it well. He came and talked to us and did a demonstration, and he was incredibly generous with his time, and everybody got really excited,” she said.
The finished mural reflects the community’s vision of the Mayo River and its connection to local families.
“He embraced a lot of what we wanted this to stand for … the kids in the river and the community feeling that we have here, and he turned it into this magic thing. I feel like we’re just incredibly lucky to have a guy who has such skills do it for us,” Mahaffey said.
Mahaffey said Murrill’s original design had a crawdad in the water instead of a trout.
“But the scale is so huge that he thought it might be really creepy and scary to have a 10-foot-tall crawdad in the bottom of the tower, so he put a trout in there instead. I kind of agree with him on that. I can see kids being terrified of it,” Mahaffey said.
Completing the mural required cooperation from several local organizations.
Bull Mountain Arts rented an 80-foot lift to reach the top of the tank. Patrick County Public Schools loaned its 50-foot lift for the middle section, and the Town of Stuart provided its 35-foot lift for work closer to the ground.
Mahaffey said the different lifts were needed because of the terrain surrounding the tank.
Murrill said the project took about 10 working days to complete.
“I guess in terms of the logistics of the project, this particular piece wasn’t necessarily a challenge vertically, but it was more a challenge navigating the surface as a cylinder. This was my first water tank or cylinder mural, and so to navigate that, it was really interesting. It definitely stretched me not just in terms of physically creating the mural, but how to design it in a functional way,” he said.
Although he hopes to paint more murals in Patrick County, Murrill said he wants the community to enjoy this one first.
“I think I waited two years in between each of these murals, so trying to give this one the time to really be celebrated by the community and enjoyed and then at some point in time I would love to return to Patrick County. Everybody there was amazingly kind, and painting there on the Mayo River Rail Trail, it was just amazing to interact with so many different people,” he said.
The mural is the latest enhancement to the Mayo River Rail Trail. A 300-pound sculpture was installed earlier this year, and another mural was added to the back of a trail kiosk last year. The trail also features a Little Free Library, River Ranger boxes, a monarch waystation pollinator garden, luminaries and other community projects.
“So that whole thing is kind of the beginning of what’s becoming this kind of art walk, and we’re all really excited about how it sort of organically began to grow that way,” Mahaffey said.
More of Murrill’s work can be viewed at .
