RPN Today - S1E2 - Murals in Rural Nebraska
Russell Shaffer
Author
10/04/2022
Added
15
Plays
Description
Murals have long been part of Nebraska’s culture and communities. But gone are the days of murals simply advertising soaps and sodas. Today’s murals adorn entire buildings and showcase a community’s history, values and culture. They are displays of what the community represents, often created by community members themselves. RPN Extension Educator Cheryl Burkhart-Kriesel, Rural Fellow Faith Junck, and others talk about the impact murals have had and the cohesiveness murals bring to Nebraska's communities and residents.
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- [00:00:00.355](upbeat music)
- [00:00:15.600]Murals have long been part
- [00:00:17.100]of Nebraska's culture and communities.
- [00:00:20.010]Omaha is home to the 32,500-square-foot mural
- [00:00:24.270]titled Fertile Ground,
- [00:00:25.890]and the state capital spent 40 years
- [00:00:27.960]installing 20 different murals in its halls.
- [00:00:30.960]But gone are the days of murals,
- [00:00:32.490]simply advertising soaps and sodas.
- [00:00:34.980]Today's murals adorned entire buildings
- [00:00:37.650]and showcase a community's history, values, and culture.
- [00:00:41.490]They're displays of what the community represents
- [00:00:44.310]often created by community members themselves.
- [00:00:47.790]In Chadron, Gabby Michna, executive director
- [00:00:50.760]of the Chamber of Commerce,
- [00:00:52.290]takes us on a tour through Art Alley,
- [00:00:54.960]an alleyway in downtown Chadron
- [00:00:56.910]that showcases 12 murals
- [00:00:58.770]all designed and painted by local residents.
- [00:01:01.620]Public art is definitely one of those things
- [00:01:03.630]that make a community come alive,
- [00:01:05.850]and especially if you have so many people touching it,
- [00:01:08.460]connecting the community through a free opportunity
- [00:01:11.340]to work together
- [00:01:12.390]to help basically captivate culture within our own town.
- [00:01:15.780]University of Nebraska-Lincoln student,
- [00:01:17.910]Faith Junck, helped paint the newest mural
- [00:01:20.520]in downtown Chadron while she lived and worked there
- [00:01:23.430]as part of the Rural Fellows Program.
- [00:01:25.680]But when people can walk by the murals and be like,
- [00:01:27.847]"Hey, I helped people train on that one."
- [00:01:30.120]Or, "Hey, my kid painted along bottom on that one."
- [00:01:33.120]There's a sense of pride with this murals there
- [00:01:35.700]and it's always something that I know
- [00:01:37.500]when people came and visited me,
- [00:01:38.760]I was like You have to see this alley.
- [00:01:40.920]The mural inspired by Norman Rockwell's
- [00:01:43.297]"Beating the Deadline"
- [00:01:44.850]was designed by local high school art teacher,
- [00:01:47.250]Travis Hencey.
- [00:01:48.810]You can have some like a five-year-old kid
- [00:01:51.000]that can walk by on this giant mural
- [00:01:53.340]and say that I was participating in that.
- [00:01:55.470]Put a hand in making Chadron beautiful.
- [00:01:57.990]In Imperial, City Administrator, Jo Leyland
- [00:02:01.170]and Community Development Director, Tyler Pribbeno
- [00:02:04.380]have created a downtown art park hiring artists
- [00:02:08.010]and drawing from the talents of Imperial's own residence.
- [00:02:11.520]Across the state, Nebraska communities
- [00:02:13.920]are revitalizing their downtowns'
- [00:02:15.900]not only through architecture,
- [00:02:17.790]but also through paint and comradery.
- [00:02:20.550]Cheryl Burkhart-Kriesel
- [00:02:22.320]of Rural Prosperity Nebraska Extension Educator
- [00:02:25.440]talks about that very thing in Scottsbluff.
- [00:02:27.880]There was a group
- [00:02:29.160]that was class called Upward Bound
- [00:02:31.800]who actually decided to take that on as a community project.
- [00:02:34.770]So if you look at it closely,
- [00:02:36.570]you'll see in the one bottom corner
- [00:02:38.640]that everyone signed their name and dated it,
- [00:02:41.700]which I think is just great.
- [00:02:43.020]It's young, to me when I see that kind of involvement
- [00:02:46.140]and commitment, that means that they had a lot of fun,
- [00:02:48.900]they were invested and they enjoyed the process.
- [00:02:52.230]From the whimsical to the bold,
- [00:02:55.980]to the historical, to the memorial,
- [00:03:00.180]to the outright fun,
- [00:03:02.550]murals across the Corn husker State
- [00:03:04.620]are making rural Nebraska not just a place to drive through,
- [00:03:08.730]but a place to drive to
- [00:03:10.590]where Nebraska's culture comes to life.
- [00:03:13.941](upbeat music)
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