The Historic District Commission voted unanimously Thursday morning to issue a Certificate of Appropriateness for a proposed mural at 110 Central Ave., which will include a few agreed-to alterations.
The commission decided at its meeting last month to reconsider its decision to grant the certificate for the mural following objections placed by the building's neighbor, St. Mary of the Springs Catholic Church.
"I'm thrilled, I'm happy, everybody's working together. Hot Springs is a great town, and we're going to make it that much nicer on the north end," building owner Bob Graham said after the approval was granted.
Graham said the mural could start as soon as next week, or as late as the middle of next month.
"Danaé (Brissonnet, the artist of the proposed mural) is in New Orleans, but she's indicated that, and of course, she's constantly trying to get work, but we hope that probably, if not next week, certainly in the next few weeks, and probably no later than the middle of May, she'll come back and create the mural," he said.
"And I'm just very pleased and happy and, hopefully, this process is over," Graham said.
Brissonnet agreed to remove two elements of the proposed mural, including one depicting a historic fire downtown.
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"There was one on the far right side, closest to the grotto. A person, an individual with their feet in the water. That caused some concern along with the burning, a building that appeared with fire on it, so basically what was agreed to was that we would make it all a flora and fauna event," Graham said. "It's just going to be a look at nature, and it's going to be beautiful."
Graham called the resolution of the matter "democracy in action, and we all got it taken care of."
"Care must be taken to preserve the character of the historic environment," Rick Stauder, the city's planning manager, said during Thursday's meeting.
The applicant, the artist and others met with church representatives on March 30. On April 4, Diane Pollock, representing St. Mary's, said in a letter to Stauder and City Manager Bill Burrough that "both parties came to mutual agreement and the mural project could go forward at the original timeline" starting the week of April 17.
"This is complicated," Stauder said.
"Historic District Commission's role in the mandate is to assess the proposal in light of adopted guidelines. With St. Mary of the Springs Catholic Church, an adjacent property not part of the district but potentially impacted in unforeseen ways, objecting to a proposal on grounds of content and imagery unrelated to adopted guidelines, the path forward may not appear clear," Stauder said.
The building, which houses Kollective Coffee + Tea, is located at the far north end of the Central Avenue Historic District. St. Mary of the Springs is not within the district.
Stauder said content and imagery are beyond the Historic District Commission's authority.
"Content and imagery, unless obscene, are protected under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment. The Historic District Commission's role is first and foremost to evaluate the proposal for the mural in light of the Central Avenue Historic District guidelines. This can be a difficult balance," he said.
"Again, quoting from the Central Avenue design review guidelines, 'The color scheme used on the building is a vital element of the building's character. The color scheme proposed shall be appropriate to the building's time period, architectural style, material, construction, and relationship to surrounding buildings,'" he said.
"Quoting from the guidelines, 'The use of inappropriate colors is discouraged. Bright, garish and non-complementary may be considered inappropriate,'" Stauder said.
"Well, Rick, thank you. I think you made a pretty good job of arguing our case, and we would respectfully request that you approve and grant permission for the application of this mural on our north wall at that 110 building" Graham told the commission.
"The general context and appearance of the mural is going to remain the same with a couple of revisions that were a concern to the church, and they addressed that and said it would be approved, so I'm just going to ask y'all to respectfully grant our request and allow us to proceed on with this," Graham said.
Mary Zunick, cultural affairs manager for Visit Hot Springs and executive director of the Hot Springs Area Cultural Alliance, and Liz Colgrove, HSACA festival and event coordinator, also addressed the commission on Thursday.
"I attended the meeting with the church. It was very agreeable and amiable. Everybody agreed with the modifications that they requested and one of the women we were meeting with, I showed her the printed version of the mural and she was like 'Oh,' and she actually said 'Oh, it's not as bright when you print it off as it is on the computer screen,' so as I stated before, the colors are not as bright when they'll be on a north-facing wall, as a digital sketch is on a computer screen, which is how many people have seen it," Zunick said.
Zunick noted the popularity of the other murals in the area.
"When we drive by all of the other murals, which are brightly colored, we see people standing in front of them, and it's actually a reason to draw people further down the street," she said. "And one thing we discussed with the church, we think, or in my opinion, they will probably have more traffic or more people actually see the grotto and the statue of Mary because they are drawn further down the street."
Colgrove, who also attended the meeting with the church, compared the sketch of the mural to the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit."
"The artist brought something to our attention that I think should be taken into consideration. When she presented the sketch for the proposed mural, it was not colored in, so the color had to be added after the fact and she explained that that was something that was done on her iPad, sort of quickly and not something that she would normally consider representational of what her work would look like," Colgrove said.
"And I think the best way to explain what that means when people are so concerned with how bright the colors are, she not only stated that it would be sort of a physical impossibility of finding paint that could exude such bright colors on a wall, but it would be kind of like, have you ever seen the movie 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' or any cartoon superimposed over realistic, so you have a photo of something that was taken on kind of a gloomy day, and on top of that she almost put what was essentially a cartoon, so it's not going to look realistic," she said.
"So if you watch those movies and you were to see a painting or something in the background, it wouldn't have those super bright qualities, so in reality, even if she chose, which she does not intend to, but even if, hypothetically, she were to choose the brightest colors to put, it still wouldn't be represented like it would in that image because again, it was like something the equivalent of a cartoon on top of a realistic picture," Colgrove said.
Bob Graham addresses the Historic District Commission during its meeting Thursday at City Hall where he asked them to issue a Certificate of Appropriateness for a mural to be painted at 110 Central Ave. - Photo by Tanner Newton of The Sentinel-Record