Iconic children’s characters come alive in 4-story mural behind R. Michelson Gallery in Northampton (2024)

NORTHAMPTON — Arthur, Paddington, Madeline and 26 other iconic children’s book characters are jumping off the page and onto the back wall of R. Michelson Galleries in a colorful four-story mural.

The Northampton Arts Council sponsored the artwork and hired muralists Ramiro Davaro-Comas and Kim Carlino to bring the gallery’s design to life. Created by Meghan Zaremba, the mural features the most memorable works from the illustrators on display in the gallery.

“So many of the country’s best illustrators grew up and are working in this area and it’s something we felt the Valley really stood for,” said Paul Gulla, gallery manager at R. Michelson. “We really did our best to put what we felt were recognizable and important characters from recent books.”

The characters, spanning from children’s books from the 1930s to present day, play across four levels of bookshelves, which pays homage to the children’s book writers in New England. Gulla said the mural’s bright colors, characters and quartered design allows passers to see the artwork even with cars obstructing the view.

“It’s a great introduction for people coming into the parking garage for the first time in town and the hundredth time in town. Maybe you’ll see something new each time,” he added.

Davaro-Comas and Carlino spent long days, from morning until late evening, in the hot sun and summer storms to finish the mural within a week. Carlino, whose arts typically features abstract shapes and fluid motion, focuses on the spacing and composition, while Davaro-Comas paints the characters and details, a task closer to his wheelhouse of goofy characters and art as storytelling.

“My son grew up with me reading these stories to them so bringing those characters to life is really special and that’s why I wanted to do the project,” Carlino said.

The mural uses a variety of projections, vinyl stencils, sprays, and roller brushes to capture all the details. Coupled with the size and canvas of exposed brick from the 1950s, the piece’s complexity is much deeper than the artwork itself.

“When you get to install someone else’s work, you get to step inside their process because you have to reverse engineer how they composed and put it together,” Carolino said. “There’s so much learning that gets to happen when you get to step inside their process, we’re getting to inhabit these very iconic figures.”

As part of the project, two honors students from Northampton High School served as mentees of Davaro-Comas and Carlino. Soren Dunaway and Klara Sokop, both rising seniors, are painting the first floor of the mural. The portion they’re working on has the most book spines, and therefore straight lines, which is particularly difficult when the canvas is textured with mortar lines.

“Its’s really difficult to work on brick, and so the past couple days has been about going in with little brushes and making sure the edges are straight because the first floor is up close and in your face, so the details matter more than the other floors,” Dunaway said.

Davaro-Comas and Carlino teach Dunaway and Sokop about the constant refining and readjusting that occurs when scaling a design on a piece of paper onto a building wall. They also discuss a lot of tricks of the trade, from organization to behind-the-scenes of planning a mural.

Despite the hot weather, Dunaway enjoys painting in public and interacting with people who pass by.

“During the Tuesday Market, this little kid came over just as we were wrapping up and he was very into the lift. I probably talked to him for a half and hour about the wall and the lift. I got to entertain this 3-year-old, which was really fun,” he said.

Gulla said the gallery will host its 35th annual illustration show this year, and the juxtaposition between the long history these characters have within the gallery and how fast their faces appear on the back wall has been strange, but exciting.

“This shows what an amazing wealth of talent that we have here in the valley, that we could do 10 walls like this and still not exhaust the talent that we have here right in this little section of the world,” Gulla said. “This is such an amazing area for the creative arts, and this is just one small part of it that can be enjoyed by people of all ages.”