Artist Danaé Brissonnet expressed confidence this week that changes she has agreed to make to her proposed mural at 110 Central Ave. will allow the project to proceed, a hope that is echoed by the building's owner.
The Historic District Commission last month decided to reconsider its decision to grant a Certificate of Appropriateness for the mural, after the adjacent St. Mary of the Springs Catholic Church objected to the artwork's color scheme and questions were raised about the Arts Advisory Committee's involvement in the approval process. The certificate is up for reconsideration during the commission's monthly meeting at 8:30 a.m. Thursday at City Hall.
"We actually had a meeting, there was like a church board that had a little problem with something in the sketch, so I just took it out and like kind of changed it, and we all agreed on like a remix of it, so that's going to be fine," Brissonnet said.
"I'm pretty open to the people. Like, when you do a mural, it's for the people that are in the neighborhood or around, and it's important to me that the people feel a connection to the work," she said.
"I think like the main people who were against it were some part of the church, but now that we've changed what they weren't really sure about and we made some modification, I think it will all be fine," Brissonnet said.
When asked if the issues with the mural have been resolved, the building's owner, Bob Graham, said, "Well, I hope so."
"We did meet with the church, and Danaé met with Mary (Zunick, executive director of the Hot Springs Area Cultural Alliance), and we made an agreement that she remove a couple of elements that were causing some bit of concern, which I feel will not in the least affect the overall feel of the mural," Graham said.
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Graham said he is looking forward to the meeting. "I thought we were going to get this settled three weeks ago at the March meeting, but we got delayed and so I think at this meeting, next week, we'll get that accomplished and approved, finally," he said.
The proposed mural will feature numerous elements related to Hot Springs. "I did study the area, now I'm like refining the sketch, just like I'm kind of reposing it and putting more detail on it," Brissonnet said.
"I mean I kind of gathered all the ideas that I wanted to put in it. I want it to be like something really peaceful and natural and like beautiful color. I want it to be like something that, you know, in an urban area, like something that could be like a window to a more natural world," she said.
In the meantime, Brissonnet has completed a different mural at SQZBX Brewery & Pizza.
SQZBX co-owners Zachary Smith and Cheryl Roorda said that the idea for the new mural originated when a friend of Roorda introduced Brissonnet to them.
Roorda said she followed Brissonnet on Instagram for a while, "and then she was like 'I will come and do a mural here' and I honestly didn't know if it would ever happen but she came by, I think in 2020, and we looked at everything and decided where it would go and she said well get this wall prepped out and then a year and a half later she shows up."
"So basically I came here like a year before and I met Cheryl and Zack and we had a whole tour of like what they've been renovating, the whole space. That was an old piano factory before, or like a piano school, and then I've seen all the decoration and I was fascinated by the ceiling that has all this super like vintage looking design on it, and yeah, I came back and we kind of had the plan to make the mural and I kind of let myself like sync with all the elements I wanted to put in," Brissonnet said.
"I know that Zach and Cheryl are like accordion player and like tuba player, so I wanted to like put these elements in it too, and then the piano for the piano factory and then the pizza, so it was kind of like a weird mix but it all kind of like, well I started wanting to blend them together, and that's what I like about doing what I do," Brissonnet said.
"I like to take elements from different places, or elements that are close to me, and just mixing them together and creating like symbolism and creating like one character with all these elements," she said.
Brissonnet said that it took her six days to paint the mural. She said that the size of the mural is why it took her so long to paint it.
"Because it's really detailed. It's like a small mural so a lot of people are like close to it and so it needs to be like really clean and beautiful. When it's really big and far, it's not as detailed. It is detailed, but it's not as particular as when it's small," she said.
The mural, Brissonnet said, will be on the wall for a while, but said that it is not permanent.
"It's not like the old technique of like Egyptian and like European Fresnos, it's not. It will last, with nice colors, five years, and then about seven years sometimes you will need to retouch, but it can last 10 years, and then after 10 years, it's kind of time to change," she said.
"I love it. I didn't give her any ideas on what I wanted. She'd come into the restaurant, she toured and she'd talked to us. We'd hung out a few times, and I really didn't know what she was going to do. I'd seen of her other work, and I really didn't know how well it would match what we were doing here, but when I saw her sketch-up for what she had in mind on this wall, I couldn't believe it," Roorda said.
"It was so full of perfect little, you know, commentary about what we're doing here," Roorda added.
"The way she just tied it in all together, and it's so playful and colorful, you know, it's the mural I didn't know I needed, and now that it's here, I can't imagine (how) boring it was before it showed up," Roorda said.
"It excites me everything I see it. I get so, so excited, it just thrills me, it's great," Roorda said.
Numerous murals have gone up over town over the last decade. Smith said he likes this, and wanted to support this effort.
"Street art is what makes a town vibrant and we, when we first rolled into town, we were street musicians and advocated for that to be allowed. We feel that the vibrancy of a town is reflected by the people in the street and as we have pedestrian traffic and as we have people who are soaking in the history and the beauty of this town, that some art, some music, some crafts, will enhance that experience for all our visitors and our locals alike," Smith said.
"Danaé is in pretty high demand around. We had seen one of her huge murals in New Orleans going up the side of a huge hotel. We had seen some work she'd done on Mo's house (a friend), so we just thought it would be a great match for putting in this little space back here," Smith said.
Brissonnet has created murals for about a decade. She said she has painted all over the globe. "I've been everywhere. I've been in Morocco, I've been in Taiwan, I've been in West Africa, Mali, Ivory Coast, I've been also, like, a lot of places in Europe, Spain, Brussels, I've been in Berlin, I've been in France a lot," she said.
"This is my first one in Arkansas, and I hope my second one's going to be at Bob's, at the Kollective cafe, next to the church," she said.
Danaé Brissonnet stands in front of the mural she painted at SQZBX. She hopes to paint another one at 110 Central Ave. next month. - Photo by Tanner Newton of The Sentinel-Record