A Mural Goes Up in Downtown Plantsville
- Philip Thibodeau
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
If you’ve driven south through downtown Plantsville in the past week, you may have seen the large mural that is now nearing completion on the building next to the pocket park at the corner of South Main and West Main. Featuring a mix of sepia-toned spray paint art and more brightly colored brushwork, the mural depicts scenes from downtown Plantsville as it would have looked about one-hundred years ago.
The project is the handiwork of a team of young ‘Mural Makers’ from Southington Youth Services working under the guidance of two local art teachers, Brian Troccolo and Allie Rinaldi. High school students in the program have been coming to the site whenever their schedules allow to work on it.
According to Troccolo, the painters have been glad to get a chance to leave their practice space and put their skills to real-world use. “It’s an opportunity to get some of the kids out into the real world and work on a job that’s not just skill building,” he said.
Youth Services Director Jon “Ish” Esmail developed the basic idea for the mural’s design during conversations with Bill Dziedzic, who co-owns the building at 772 South Main along with Joe Calvanese. “We started brainstorming,” said Esmail. “After considering some themes like water and ducks, we eventually landed on the idea of showcasing the history of Plantsville as a tie-in with the America 250 celebration. We thought, how can we encapsulate the history of Plantsville here now that we have this pocket park?”
Next, Troccolo worked with Dziedzic to pick out a set of old black-and-white photographs that would serve to model the basic elements for the design. “In earlier times, they had a trolley station here, a few department stores, a drugstore, the original church,” he explained. “It’s going reflect what was over there [across the street]. All of these pictures came from the History of Southington book. It’s a little tip of the hat to the history of the area.”
“The mural is in sepia tone because it’s based on the old pictures,” he said. “The artistic challenge is making a bunch of things that weren’t originally next to each other look like they go together, while still being their own separate entities.”
A mechanical cherry-picker made it easier and safer to work on the upper register of the mural. “I spent enough of my youth standing on precarious ladders. I don’t need to pass down that experience to my students,” Troccolo joked.
Esmail recounted how the ‘Mural Maker’ program, now in its second year, initially got off the ground.
“I’m the director of Youth Services, where we try to offer support and resources for youth and family in the community. One of the things we do is build pro-social programming, whether it be woodworking, self-defense, baby-sitting, CPR… I met Brian at a restaurant and he was doing some art. I said ‘this is incredible! How would you like to run a program?’ All the synergies worked out to have him run the art program.”
“We wanted to offer it to high school kids. He got Allie, another high school teacher, to help him out. He has four to six kids consistently coming. Last year they did the mural at Memorial Park, the one that says ‘Welcome to Memorial Park’.”
According to Dziedzic, all funding for the mural came from private sources, with no taxpayer money or grants involved.
