New Mars Hill art mural celebrates county's beautiful and complicated history

MARS HILL - Art can celebrate a town or county's rich history while also acknowledging its sometimes complicated pasts and encouraging residents to reflect on both.

That's exactly what a new mural art project in downtown Mars Hill is aiming to do, as a Durham-based multidisciplinary artist is working with six local apprentices, including three Mars Hill University students, on a new piece celebrating Mars Hill and Madison County's identities.

Kelly Spencer, an art therapy professor at Mars Hill University, helped coordinate the project. Jonna Kwiatkowski, chair of the social sciences department at Mars Hill University, said Spencer is using her sabbatical to engage the larger Mars Hill community in the creation of a community mural project.

The mural is being produced on a building owned by Mars Hill professor James Heinl, as Heinl had wanted a mural placed on the building for years, Spencer said.

"Initially, this started as an idea of bringing people of Mars Hill and getting their ideas of what they wanted and what they wanted to see on a mural," Spencer said. "As an art therapy professor, the idea was too was, a lot of art therapy is moving away from individual therapy into community-based art, and really recognizing the power of public art and community art, and having spaces be something that people are feeling connected to."

Heinl said the mural project will also afford visitors at the Mars Hill Ingles to see the artwork.

There are multiple investors for the project, and it is not affiliated with the university, Spencer said.

Spencer issued a community survey to hear from community members, students, faculty and people throughout Mars Hill. The survey was administered through the town's social media site, Spencer said.

The artist, Gabriel Eng-Goetz, or Gabe, was born and raised in Durham.

According to Spencer, more than 200 community members responded to the survey.

"I think a lot of people are very, very excited about it," Spencer said. "What's been really amazing is being out here while Gabe's working on the mural, and a lot of people are coming by and stopping and taking photos and getting really excited about having more visible art in this space. But I think any time you have art around, too, I think some people have different opinions."

Some of the most common themes residents said they'd like to be featured in the community survey were the area's rich history in the arts and Appalachian heritage, the original Cherokee settlers, as well as the natural/geographical component of Mars Hill.

Eng-Goetz and Spencer performed an intensive community input study, and Eng-Goetz spoke with Mars Hill University environmental sciences professor Laura Boggess and Appalachian Studies professor Leila Weinstein.

Eng-Goetz, 38, received the help of a number of apprentices - Amanda Nicholson (local artist and employee at MHU, Carlos Miranda, a local artist and employee at Mars Landing art gallery, Jennifer Hott, a local artist and Mars Hill resident of 30 years and Madison Ammons, as well as Mars Hill University students Kaitlyn Johnson, Grace Keaser and Madison Ammons.

Keaser is from Inglewood, Florida, and said this is the first mural she's worked on. She admitted she was a little intimidated, as she's accustomed to working on mailboxes.

"I was a bit anxious to do it at first because I was like, this isn't just my own work, and I don't want to mess it up," Keaser said. "But this has been a lot of fun."

Eng-Goetz said he was contacted by Spencer through Buncombe County Register of Deeds Drew Reisinger, as Eng-Goetz did a mural piece celebrating historically Black neighborhoods in Asheville.

Eng-Goetz incorporated local iconography, including a mandolin, Bailey Mountain Preserve, a pilleated woodpecker and a golden-winged warbler, and local flora and fauna, including rhododendron.

"It just makes it so much more social, and it's community building, so it's interesting for me as an artist," Eng-Goetz said of the community engagement process in Mars Hill.

"Just talking to the people on the street, they're super supportive. Just meeting all the characters here has been great."

Working with local stakeholders, Eng-Goetz, who is Chinese-American, drew a metaphor to himself as "the vessel" for the community to showcase its spirit and identities through the community engagement process.

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"So the impact is really just the engagement," Eng-Goetz said. "People were asking for Cherokee representation. A lot of my pieces, I want to uplift those stories. So coming in, I'm just making those ideas work. Visually, I can think about these things and put them on a wall, but the magic really happens with what Kelly does."

Eng-Goetz said he employs "subtle symbolism" in his art to help illuminate subjects and bring more depth to a story.

One such example is the use of bricks in the mural, which Eng-Goetz said is a reference to Joseph Anderson. According to the Mars Hill Anderson Rosenwald School archives, Anderson and his family were owned by J.W. Anderson, one of the founders of Mars Hill College and secretary to the Board of Trustees.

According to the archives, in 1859 Anderson was taken by the Buncombe County Sheriff as collateral on the contractor’s $1,100 debt and placed in jail in Asheville until the debt was paid.

Eleven of the college trustees raised the money, paying the debt for Joe’s return to Mars Hill. Joe lived out his life on a small farm below the campus on Gabriels Creek, dying around 1910.

Oral tradition says that Joe may have helped make the bricks for the first building.

According to Spencer, Anderson came up a lot in the community survey as well.

"This is symbolizing the legacy of Black education in this state prior to integration," Eng-Goetz said. "Those are a lot of the stories that I learned about through the community engagement campaign and my own research, and we wanted to put those in the piece.

"The big thing I like to do with my murals is bold color, bold imagery and subtle symbolism. I want people to dive into details, learn about it and kind of pull these things out."

Johnny Casey has served more than three years as the Madison County communities reporter for The Citizen Times and The News-Record & Sentinel. He was recognized with a first-place award in beat news reporting in 2023 by the North Carolina Press Association.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Mars Hill mural celebrates county's beautiful and complicated history