AUGUSTA, GA – This week, rumors have been circulating regarding some complaints from a handful of Summerville residents about the Art on the Wall mural on Highland Avenue’s water treatment plant.

Apparently, some residents have described the mural as “unsightly” and they want it removed.

Just a few weeks ago, the Metro Spirit’s Alice Wynn wrote a story about the Art Factory and the Augusta Utilities Department teaming up to turn a plain wall into a work of local art.

“We hope this step in the public art world will grow,” Cindy O’Brien, executive director of The Art Factory, told the Spirit. “And we hope it will inspire others to really make more of an effort to create public art in Augusta.”

That is what should have happened. But this is Augusta, after all.

The first phase of the project, a mural on the wall facing Highland Avenue, was recently completed with artists Russ Bonin, Richard Worth and Raoul Pacheco depicting the Savannah River.

The artists worked in a high-quality paint, guaranteed not to flake or peel for 25 years. And now a handful of Summerville residents want to demand that the Augusta Commission have the mural removed. This despite the fact that the mural will save taxpayers more than $500,000 over the cost of surrounding the water treatment plant with bricks.

Some of the folks living in Summerville even went to the Historic Preservation Commission (HPC) to see if the water treatment plant was located in the
locally controlled historic district.

Guess what? It’s not. So, the HPC has no legal authority over the mural.

I guess these Summerville residents will have to go and cry to their Augusta commissioners. Get ready, Joe Bowles and Don Grantham, to hear some whining.

I can only imagine what will come once the second and third phases of the Art on the Wall project begin.

Phase III, on the wall facing Iris Street, will be completed by groups such as the Boys & Girls Club and give teens an opportunity to study visual arts.

“We hope the project with the teens will inspire them to discover new things about themselves; how to work together, how to create something they can give back to the community and hopefully inspire them to graduate and go on to college,” O’Brien recently told the Spirit.

If some of the Summerville residents did not like the professional artists’ paintings, I can only imagine what they will say when the children from the Boys & Girls Club paint on the wall.

By the way, aren’t the folks in Summerville the ones who often boast about supporting local artists?

This small group of Summerville residents may want to rethink their position on the mural.

They are making the entire neighborhood look bad.