{"id":50259,"date":"2011-10-25T14:37:32","date_gmt":"2011-10-25T14:37:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=50259"},"modified":"2023-05-02T17:18:53","modified_gmt":"2023-05-02T21:18:53","slug":"lisbon-street-mural","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2011\/10\/25\/lisbon-street-mural\/","title":{"rendered":"Lisbon Street mural project of 1971"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A 1971 project to paint a colorful mural on a Lisbon Street brick wall was a sign of the times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Donald Lent, Bates\u2019 new Dana Professor of Art, was looking for a Short Term project that would connect students to his civic efforts around urban renewal in Lewiston.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The city, wanting to open a new pedestrian walkway linking upper Lisbon Street and Park Street\u2019s retail and parking areas, had demolished a wood-frame building next to Edward\u2019s Clothing Store, at 114 Lisbon St.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The store\u2019s newly exposed brick wall caught Lent\u2019s eye. Encouraged by the city\u2019s Urban Renewal Authority, Lent got permission from the building\u2019s owner to paint a mural on the wall, then selected 13 students from 30 who showed interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Don Lent gestures toward students working on the Lisbon Street mural during Short Term 1971. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Lent had a knack for putting students on the right tasks. Norton Virgien \u201974 was interested in filmmaking, so Lent charged him with producing a documentary about the project with his 8mm camera. Now an animated-film director in Los Angeles, Virgien told Bates Magazine<\/em> in 2004 that the \u201cthought processes that went into telling that story are still the ones I use today.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guided by Lent, the students developed sketches on butcher paper and painted the mural in white, blue, red, and a particularly tenacious traffic yellow. The mural\u2019s narrative was straightforward: pedestrians moving through familiar Lewiston places. \u201cI wanted the mural to connect to people in town,\u201d Lent says. Silhouettes of downtown features included the onion domes of the Kora temple and the spires of the Basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
An unidentified man, perhaps then-Dean of the College James Carignan \u201961, films students working on the Lisbon Street mural during Short Term 1971. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bates had just approved an art major, and Lent was no fool: He stocked the project mostly with freshmen eager to prove their artistic zeal. Those were heady times, says Jonathan Lowenberg \u201974, who came to Bates to major in chemistry but switched to art partly because of the mural project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was a great dynamic,\u201d he recalls. \u201cWe were enthusiastic about the major, and the project was something completely new for all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201971, urban renewal still seemed like a good thing. Lent recalls the project \u201cfeeling so integrated with what was going on in the town.\u201d Lowenberg, whose Mirror<\/em> portrait shows him painting the mural, remembers everyone thinking that the \u201cmural was going to be there a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But one day a decade later, Lent saw workers sandblasting the mural. \u201cThat felt awful,\u201d he says. Lisbon Street was losing its retail businesses, and the clothing store had closed, to be replaced by an Asian restaurant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Though the Lisbon Street mural created by Don Lent and his students in 1971 was removed decades ago, evidence of its existence can been seen in chips of white and yellow paint that cling to the building\u2019s brickwork. (Jay Burns\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMaybe,\u201d Lent says, \u201cthe mural was more like an installation, designed for a specific place and time. After a while, it just didn\u2019t fit into the plan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, the wall belongs to an Indian restaurant. Tiny white and yellow paint chips from the mural still cling to the bricks. And if you stand back, you can still see the outline of one of the mural\u2019s pedestrians, walking through the scene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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