9/17/20: Columbia's 'Fun & Funky' Murals!

In my last post, I wrote about our fun exploration of South Carolina's capital city, Columbia - with a tour of its very attractive capitol building and landscaped grounds and the nearby downtown core. In between the city's sights, we also made time to take a look at some of the city's murals and unusual statues. Because of the rain, we drove instead of walking as we'd normally have done to see Busted Plug by artist Blue Sky. His four-story-high hydrant weighed 675,000 pounds!

Of course, a dog just had to be part of the hydrant work of art!

Not far away was a tribute to the state's agricultural past.

Another Blue Sky mural, called Tunnel Vision, was on the rear of a very stately building. The tunnel caught my eye because it looked so incredibly realistic with even the clearance height listed!

In the heart of downtown Columbia, Steven and I walked by Josef Kristofoletti's It’s Electric Mural that looked like an electric shock or current.

I imagine a lot of people would also correctly name this unusual piece Green Eyes that was located in Columbia's Studio Arts District. According to artist Clark Ellefson, it referred to a long-ago fantasy of when robots walked the earth. This was a lost and buried member of the robot family who had emerged from the ground to be discovered!

I was more curious than Steven (and didn't mind getting wet!) about the murals in a pretty depressing alley by the Seabord passenger depot that I wrote about in the previous post. What a shame the vibrant murals were all but hidden to a few people instead of being displayed in a more public spot.

Columbia is affectionately known as the Soda City by locals, but not because any soda was invented or manufactured there! Instead, the nickname came from an old abbreviation of Columbia to 'Cola.'  A Watermarked Soda City "captured a message of compassion and love for our community... the fusion between water and sun pays tribute to our city's ability to unite and overcome the tragic flood of 2015." The water flowing from the bottle represented both the natural disaster and the passion that poured into the city's rebuild effort. The motto "We are Columbia, strong above water and below it" made perfect sense in light of the flood.

Our Community, Soda City Diner by Keith Tolen showed a community gathered around to hear the music performed by an animal band outside a Seaboard Air Line rail car that had been converted into a diner. The mural also celebrated the unity and sense of community that brought people to rebuild the city after the flood. 

I read that the Columbia Map of Infinite Connectedness by Michael Dantzler explored the abstract connection between humans, nature, and water. If not for the accompanying explanation, I wouldn't have known that the colors depicted human movement, preservation, and development and that the mural reflected the ways that Columbia's rivers wrapped and embraced its residents.

We were lucky that no one had parked on the side of Sure Fire Tacos and Urban Outfitters so we could see all of the cheerful Lady Vista mural by Cait Maloney.

We then found this interesting series of murals called Generations in the Pot Smokers BBQ restaurant parking lot. They told the story of Columbia's growth beginning in 1700 when the Congaree Native Americans encountered explorer John Lawson and his men as they made their way up the Congaree River. The first panel was titled Discovery.

After Columbia was chosen as the state capital, the Government mural showed construction of the capitol building beginning in 1855.

When one-third of Columbia was burned to the ground in 1865 by Union troops under the command of General Sherman, the effects of the Civil War intensified.

In the Industry panel, the mill industry was depicted as being critical to the state's reconstruction. The Columbia Mill became the world's first fully electric mill in 1893. 

The last panel showed the importance of agriculture to the region as the farmer looked over the horizon, possibly wondering "What lies ahead?"

On the side of the Immaculate Consumption coffee shop was this gorgeous mural by Lauren Andreu. I wasn't sure if it portrayed an oncoming train or Aztec ruins!

I had to do some research to find the story behind this mural on Main Street. I read that it was a tribute to donut-loving Columbia musician Aaron Graves who died in 2019 at the age of 33, five years after being diagnosed with brain cancer. The mural was painted by Lauren Andreu and Claude Gilbert, both friends of Graves. “It recognizes an important contributor to our cultural community and the impact he made on so many people.” The tribute mural featured images that represented parts of Graves’ character and his life: clouds in honor of Graves’ famous sky journal photos, an homage to Those Lavender Whales, and, of course, donuts.

I was so lucky that no one had parked in front of the Five Points Postcard in the neighborhood of the same name. Just like the neighborhood here in Denver, Columbia's Five Points was a local hotspot with plenty of bars and places to grab a bite to eat. The massive mural just down the street from multiple college campuses celebrated everything that Soda City was famous for.

This dynamic Crawfish Mural by McClellan Douglas Jr. was in the Rosewood section of Columbia and was designed to capture the vibrancy of the neighborhood because so many musicians and artists live there. Douglas had been commissioned to paint a mural involving airplanes but, after speaking with some small business owners in the area, he wanted “to do something fun and funky” and commemorate the crawfish festival. Unfortunately, as soon as the mural was complete, the crawfish festival was moved to the city's fairgrounds. 

The mural across the street in the Pelican's Snoballs parking lot captured the likeness of the Godfather of Soul James Brown by Columbia native Tripp Derrick Barnes.

Called The Barbershop, this mural also on Rosewood, was on the side of The World's Greatest Barbershop, which of course fit the theme of the artwork. If you look closely at the second photo, you'll spot Prince with his telltale purple guitar. I am not so musically inclined to recognize the other musicians in the painting.

The Chopped-Up Fox by Clay Wooten, on the side of the Cigar Box on Rosewood, was definitely more graphic than the others if you notice the bunny on the bottom chopping up the fox!

Interactive Artworks were the creators of the many murals that blanketed the front, sides, and back of Haven Home, a health services company. I was disappointed I couldn't find any information about the story of the murals as they deserved greater recognition.

Columbia was a capital city that delighted and enchanted me right from the get-go. I was hooked by its proximity to Congaree National Park, its extremely attractive capitol building, its intriguing architecture in the downtown core, its vibrant arts and historic districts, the extremely friendly people who went out of their way during the pandemic to welcome us to their city, and, of course, the public art and colorful murals in every area of the city. Though Steven and I had visited much of South Carolina half a dozen times or more over the years, we'd never toured its capital city before last summer. That had absolutely been our loss - we were so thankful to finally rectify that omission!

Next post: A stop in Camden, South Carolina, en route to Raleigh in North Carolina.

Posted on May 11th, 2021, just as the sun made a late appearance for the first time in days, glory be! Those of us here in the Denver area are heartily sick of all this constant rain and snow flurries and are looking forward to wearing warm-weather clothes instead of jackets and mitts again soon. Some locals even went so far as to take family Christmas photos outside today in the snow as they couldn't do it last December! I hope it is warm where you are - stay safe and be well.