A large-scale mural spanning 160,000 square feet across 28 grain silos on the Maumee River’s east bank, upstream from downtown Toledo, is gaining financial traction and is scheduled for completion next summer.
The Glass City River Wall mural installation, whose concept will speak to the city’s storied history in Native American farming, started out as a plan for waterfront beautification at the Miami Street grain elevator belonging to Archer Daniels Midland Co., a global agribusiness based in Decatur, Ill.
It morphed from there into a public art project that would brand Toledo and act as both an economic development and education component for the community, said project managers. The mural will be visible to the roughly 82,000 motorists who cross I-75’s nearby DiSalle Bridge over the river on an average day, according to the Ohio Department of Transportation.
“I think this will bring a lot to the community in different ways. For one, just the sheer scale of it, I think, will be really impressive. It has multiple points of view,” said Nathan Mattimoe, director of art in public places for the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo, which has served in an advisory role for the project.
“It’s a really just a wonderful, huge canvas that can really add a vibrant element to travelers who enter Toledo, to folks in boats on the river, and ... dependent on how the design proceeds, certain parts of this mural will be visible from the east side by certain residents,” Mr. Mattimoe said.
The project’s budget is $700,000, and Urban Sight Inc., the nonprofit set up to handle the project, has raised about $400,000 of that so far, including from the city of Toledo, ProMedica, and ADM itself, which donated $25,000. The latest agency to approve funding for the project was the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority, which on Thursday unanimously approved a $25,000 grant to the Greater Toledo Community Foundation, project partner with Urban Sight.
“We have been in the quiet phase of fund-raising for this transformative community project, and we are thrilled to hear that the port authority has decided to help us bring it to fruition,” said Christina Kasper, Glass City River Wall’s project manager and Urban Sight’s president.
Organizers commissioned California-based artist Gabe Gault to create the mural with a team of student artists from Lourdes University, starting in the spring. The mural will highlight the indigenous people who lived along the river and were the region’s first farmers thousands of years ago.
The art installation is expected to be finished by late summer — before the Solheim Cup golf tournament scheduled to start Aug. 31 at the Inverness Club in Toledo.
A final design has not been approved.
“The site is recognized for its historic value and is designated with a plaque describing the fortification and its significance. It is a story that is seldom told, but steeped in rich history,” the Glass City River Wall website states. “Throughout the years, Toledo has celebrated its diversity and vibrant spirit. It is our vision to commemorate the history of our community and highlight the mission of ADM.”
The organization is also working with local schools to develop an education curriculum to complement the public art project and its history, and with Native American groups for cultural insight.
“Another really strong component of this is this concept of honoring the history of the site and specifically first peoples who inhabited this area before Europeans arrived, the Native American communities and cultures that called our area home,” Mr. Mattimoe said. “It was a really strategic site for Native American groups to camp and to hunt, [and] there’s a history of rice production in the area. That was really important that we tie in as much as we could on the significance of that site in the work.”
Mr. Gault, an African-American artist from southern California whose work oftentimes employs classical painting methods with modern subjects, has done work for such notable companies as Nike, the NAACP, Will and Jada Smith Foundation, UCLA’s Centennial “100 Years of Activism,” The Tommie Smith Youth Athletics Foundation, and ACLU of Southern California.
First Published December 21, 2020, 1:00 p.m.