John Wareham/News
John Donnelly’s first mural in downtown Mount Vernon was the one on the side of the MTVarts rehearsal building on Ohio Avenue. After the Ohio Avenue project, he painted several more around town.
Much of the downtown area of the city was closed off Friday night for the first of the monthly summer events, which regularly opens storefronts up and down Main Street, and features entertainment in the square, booths, food and tours.
One of this month’s featured events was a tour of the painted murals that adorn some of the buildings in the downtown area. Several buildings, including ones on Ohio Avenue, Gay Street and Mulberry Street, were designed and painted mostly by the same person, artist John Donnelly.
Donnelly, a professor at Mount Vernon Nazarene University, was the tour guide on the tractor-driven ride through some areas near the square and he presented his work and explained the details of each mural as it progressed.
Donnelly has been doing murals in Mount Vernon since 1989, but mostly interiors. He has painted walls in the Knox County Health Department and the Hillside Vet Clinic; almost all of the area nursing homes, along with some individual residences and the nursery in the hospital, to name a few. A few years ago, the Knox County Landmark Foundation asked Donnelly if he would be on the landmark foundation committee as they had wanted to select several different art projects and they had initially started with murals and were looking into doing other things.
Another artist did the first two projects, one of which is a piece above the gospel supply shop on Main Street, and they asked Donnelly to do one of his own, but he was unavailable at the time.
Donnelly was later asked to touch up one of the paintings. Then, when the original artist moved out of town, he took over the whole project.
“At that point, they just asked (me), would you be interested in doing one next year...they were looking at the MTVarts building at Ohio Street,” Donnelly said. “I said sure, I’d be glad to do it.”
The theme for Donnelly was simple. The Foundation wanted to keep the mural (or murals) historic or at least related to Mount Vernon in some way. The main stipulation was to not have the painting be a advertisement for the building itself or for the owner of it.
“So in (the MTVarts building) case, MTVarts had just taken over that building and theater is a large part of Mount Vernon, so they said “can you just talk about the history of theater,” Donnelly said.
He said that his process is to put together a sketch or two and take it to the committee which may or may not make modifications. Then he prepped the wall and went to work.
“You have to listen to the client and put in what needs to be there, so for that one, I started with the Greek and then moved to a theater that looks like the Woodward Opera House, but it’s not, it’s a theater in Paris, France. Then you see Broadway, and you see Shakespeare, you see Peter Pan in there, and there’s some 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s women with the bifocals and then the stage door.”
The first mural that Donnelly did established recurring things that he has done, in some way or another, in each painting around town.
In the initial MTVarts mural, he added a picture of a dog that looked like the one that played Toto in the 2009 MTVarts version of The Wizard of Oz - and he has put the same dog in every mural since, as a nod to the original one.
After the warehouse mural, he was then commissioned to paint the wall next to the Grand Hotel, which was a larger scale than the first one and took three and a half months to complete.
He again kept with the theme of connecting the mural with the building, so he painted Masonic lodge-related items and club themes on the outside of the building, which houses a lodge and a club. He also added the dog again, as well as Johnny Appleseed, and added in his son and daughter as a nod to them.
Donnelly is still on the committee to approve murals and said that the committee will take a take a year off before starting another project.
The mural tour started and ended in front of the Grand Hotel, where many classic cars were parked and displayed during the First Friday festivities.
Main Street Mount Vernon is instrumental in putting on First Friday, which is open to the public the first Friday of the month, during each month between June until October 4.
“It’s been great to bring the family to First Fridays,” said Nick Burson, board member and local business owner. “There’s always something for the kids. We always run into other friends and family and have a great time. Its great to be able to do so downtown.”
