Artists Team Up on Preservation Art Project, Now on Display at the Walnut House

Our fishy friends need help keeping our local rivers and streams clean, and the Walnut House is helping do just that through the power of art, along with their friends at the Rutherford Art Alliance. The Walnut House’s general manager, Ricky Martini, said the location has begun a fundraising auction for pieces included in an interchangeable mural that is currently on display on the building’s wall, with the money raised to be donated to the local environment preservation effort Tennessee Riverkeeper.

The mural will remain on display for six months, and on Oct. 20 the various pieces of the mural, each created by a different local artist, will be taken down, framed and given to the winning bidders.

Martini said Walnut House has been hosting murals on the side of its building for years in cooperation with the RAA, but this year he asked if he could suggest the subject of the mural. The current piece, named “The River Runs Through Us,” along with its preservation theme, was the result.

The mural consists of 28 total panels; Martini’s wife, Carole, painted 14 of these, made up of Owens Corning pink foam sheets cut to 32 inches tall by 48 inches wide, with the entire mural itself standing four panels tall and seven panels wide. Martini said the reason he chose the material was because he needed to drill a hole through something thick to fit it in an angle iron mounted to the top of a brick wall and another mounted on the wall’s bottom, to keep each piece of the mural in place.

Syd at the Greenway by Pam Pinkerton Mac

Greenway Bridge by Ryan Frizzell

Other local artists creating work for the project include Lisa Browning, Ryan Frizzell, Carol Berning, Pamela Mack, Lisa Sims, Suzanne LeBeau, Melinda Tate, Susan Gulley, Gregory Lannom, Molly Stein, Tom Seymour, Ginny Togrye, Meagan Armes and Larry Pinkerton.