- November 17, 2024
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The tile mural Palm Coast shoppers have wheeled their shopping carts past since 1978 when entering or leaving the Publix in the Palm Harbor Shopping Center may soon be no more, a casualty of the plaza’s renovation.
Publix representatives haven’t yet given definitive answers to questions about the Palm Harbor Publix mural’s fate, but in the past, when Publix stores have been remodeled, the murals have come down with them, and Publix does not commission new ones.
“They probably won’t save it because it is permanent,” said Pati Mills, the Winter Haven artist who painted the mural in 1978. “It’s adhered with adhesive directly to the concrete. You can’t take them off unless you break them.”
The Palm Coast Publix mural at 298 Palm Coast Parkway NE is a beach scene: Palm trees frame the image in the foreground, while far-off sailboats cruise along the blue water in the background. There are sand dunes with dune shrubbery, seashells, spoil islands and a flock of white birds.
Mills, a self-taught artist who painted about 200 Publix murals over the course of 25 years, didn’t use photos as a reference. “I would just find out what was prevalent in an area,” she said. “I could actually just look at the wall and see the picture.” She sketched the scenes across the 4x4 tiles in pencil, painted them with glaze, then fired them, numbering the back of each tile so they could be installed at the site.
She knew of one mural in Bradenton that survived renovation because the exterior wall the mural was installed on was preserved and made into an interior wall. Other than that, they came down. She has photos of some, she said, but she often didn’t bother to so much as look at the murals — which she painted in her garage, and, in the early years, fired in her barn — after they were installed in locations around the state.
“I did not want to see them,” she said. The steady work ensured that she was “never a starving artist”: She was paid an average of $5,000 for each, she said. She began painting them when she was in her 30s, after getting her GED and trying her hand at pottery. “The first five bought my house, gave me the down payment on my house. They got me my sea plane, and put my kids through school. … Dust to dust — we come in as dust, we will leave as dust. I’m just moving on to something else.”
But in the towns where such public art is installed, said Gargiulo Art Foundation Director Arlene Volpe, it can shape a community’s sense of itself.
“It’s history. It’s the history of what’s been going on here. It’s important,” she said. If the Publix mural comes down, she said, “That’s a shame. … I hate to see anything that has some historical value to it demolished for the sake of new things coming in.”
The Gargiulo Art Foundation is trying to bring more public art to the city, she said.
“It shows the history of what’s been going on it Palm Coast, since it’s such a new city,” she said. “We already have wonderful sport activities going on — fishing, golfing — we just want to make sure the cultural aspect is right out there. … We travel up and down the coast and you almost inevitably see a large sculpture as you’re entering a city. It’s telling you, ‘We’re here. Come and see us. We have something to offer.’”
City of Palm Coast spokeswoman Cindi Lane said it would be pity if the mural is demolished.
“Public art reflects our community, what we’re all about — it makes it kind of ours,” she said.
Palm Coast’s Beautification and Environmental Advisory Committee has a subgroup, headed by city landscape architect Bill Butler, which works with organizations like the Gargiulo Art Foundation to bring sculpture to the city, she said.
“With Palm Coast being so young, is isn’t like we have that many historic structures or monuments or anything, so this is a way of building them,” she said. “People who grow up here, they’ll remember seeing them and visiting them as kids, and then they’ll bring their kids.”
One product of that partnership is the panther statue at Linear Park on Palm Coast Parkway. The plans for the new city hall, Lane said, also include a space that is being left vacant for a sculpture.
Lane said that if the Publix mural is indeed to be torn down, the city might take pictures of it so that it’s at least preserved on photo paper, if not in its original fired clay.
“We were thinking at the very least it would be nice to have a professional photograph done for the Historical Society,” she said. “I think the city could probably do that if that’s what ends up happening.”
