Open house Friday night at Charles City Arts Center celebrates latest Town of Colors mural, artists

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

The Charles City Arts Center is holding a free open house from 5 to 7 tonight (Friday) to celebrate local artists Janiece Bergland and Robin Macomber and celebrate the latest two murals in Charles City’s Town of Colors.

The completion of Macomber’s mural this week will wrap up the Town of Colors projects for 2022. Her mural is located on the back of the Rustic Corner store. Bergland’s mural, completed this past summer, is on the back of the Saxony store. Both stores have their fronts on Main Street.

Macomber said she and Rustic Corner owner Tami Vetter came up with the design for the Vetter’s storeback mural over a couple of beers.

“Tammy wanted a mural painted and she requested that it be me,” Macomber said. “She wanted it to be peonies – she loves peonies. I said, ‘OK, peonies, what else?’ And she said, ‘I’ve always thought about getting a tattoo of a peony.’”

Macomber said she suggested an arm with a tattoo of a peony on it.

“She said, ‘Oh, my God,’ when I first came to Charles City I started a business called Working Women,” Macomber said, quoting Vetter. “Her logo was Rosie the Riveter with Tami’s face on it. So it all came together.”

Macomber said the size and complexity of the mural is right in her wheelhouse, and similar to other murals she has done all over the world, except that this one is somewhat more hidden away.

“It’s kind of a hidden gem,” she said. “Most of mine are right out there in your face and well lit. So this is a little different.”

The painting was a little more challenging because of the ribbed siding on the building, she said. And with the narrowness of the alley she had to move the boom lift several times to reach all the upper areas.

Still, she said, she was happy with the result and a couple of little extras she was adding, such as a canvas she was painting to cover the inside of a window in the wall, to provide light control for the store and tie in with the rest of the mural.

“My entire life has been lived as a maker fascinated by the arts,” Macomber said. “When I was in middle school my parents commissioned a mural in Cedar Rapids. I watched as a single man turned the side of an ugly building into a beautiful piece of art with a brush, cans of house paint and talent. A high school art teacher recognized my talents and encouraged me to set a goal and have a dream.”

She quit her full-time job in 1996, started a business called Whimsical Touch Decorative Painting and has been painting full time for the last 26 years.

“I have painted on walls, ceilings, floors, all types of surfaces. I have done restoration, design and building. My passion is murals and I am so excited to see the resurgence of murals and opportunity to make the ordinary extraordinary,” Macomber said.

Janiece Bergland’s mural was painted on the back wall of Saxony in August. It salutes “Prairie Mary” in a field of wild orchids in the foreground and five decades of fashion in the background.

Bergland is an experienced stage designer, private voice teacher and choir director, painter, and a signature member of the Iowa Watercolor Society. She has painted backdrops for Luther College’s Juletide Festival, Christmas at Wartburg and Morningside College’s Christmas Festival.

Bergland said she has always found drawing and painting habitual. Though a music major in college, following graduation and a few years of teaching, she and her family traveled several times to New England where she took workshops in watercolor with artists whose work she admired.

Now working almost exclusively in watercolor, Bergland said she finds the spontaneity and energy in that medium suit her well. Large murals and stage sets require similar techniques, but on a much greater scale, she said.

This is the second year of the Town of Colors Mural Project. After the initial two murals were painted last year, this year four more have been added.

One of the first murals this year was painted by Matt Litwin, known professionally as Limpio, depicting a scene on a Charles City Whitewater Park concrete wall that evolves from a salute to reading and the nearby public library, into underwater river creatures before wrapping around the corner to a 10-foot high heron facing the Cedar River.

The other mural completed in July was by Britt Flodd, evoking images of “The Mad Scientist” on the end wall of an apartment complex at 700 Wisconsin St.

Town of Colors’ goal is to beautify Charles City and support long term economic growth, said Emily Kiewel, director of the Charles City Arts Center.

“We are currently looking for walls for our 2023 murals. If you would like to be part of this exciting project please contact the Charles City Arts Center. You can also support our efforts by making a donation online at charlescityarts.org,” she said.