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Fresh Paint: Richmond Muralists Tell the Story of Virginia, From Prehistory to Today

Saffeya Ahmed | August 20, 2018

Topics: amelia langford, art, ed trask, Hamilton Glass, Mickael Broth, Natural Bridge, noah scalin, RVA ARt, virginia museum of history and culture, Wing Chow

A handful of Richmond artists will be creating murals inspired by the history of Virginia – and you’ll be able to see the mural-making process live and on-site.

“Fresh Paint: Murals Inspired by the Story of Virginia” intertwines Richmond history with street art, as muralists take inspiration from the Virginia Museum of History & Culture’s 9 million item collection. With artifacts ranging from photographs to World War I uniforms to stills for making alcohol, every piece is inspired by an item of their choice.

“This is an expression of [the] history happening outside of our museum,” said Andrew Talkov, Vice President for Exhibitions and Publications. “And so we wanted to bring that into our museum. [These] objects have a deeper, broader story to tell.”

For muralist Amelia Langford, “Fresh Paint” is right up her alley. As an avid storyteller through intricate, black-and-white illustrations, graphic designs, and murals, Langford is ready to infuse her unique artistry with the historical account of her artifact.

“I am a vessel of storytelling. There’s always a story that drives my work…every little piece that’s in there, is there for a reason,” Langford said. “And now, [I want to] tell the story of Virginia.”

The 28-year-old Richmond native draws much of her inspiration from ecosystems and 18th and 19th-century naturalists. Although she isn’t ready to reveal her historical object of inspiration yet, Langford said she is excited to see street art meld deeper with Richmond art history.

Triple Crossing Brewery Mural 2017, Amelia Langford

“I’ve been painting murals for 15 years,” Langford said. “Street art was, at one point, something that was frowned upon. But in today’s culture, it’s something very accepting and it brightens a community [like] Richmond. We have over 100 murals from artists all over the world and locally [becoming] a part of our community and our modern-day culture.”

Triple Crossing Brewery Mural 2017, Amelia Langford

“Fresh Paint” will feature 10 artists: Mickael Broth, Nico Cathcart, Wing Chow, Hamilton Glass, Chris Hulburt, Amelia Langford, Austin Miles, Toobz Muir, Noah Scalin, and Ed Trask. With distinct artistic styles, each muralist’s artifact will be displayed next to the finished mural for viewers to see where the inspiration came from. Some of the specific artifacts to be highlighted include a 1921 photograph of social reformer Janie Porter Barrett, an automobile made early in Virginia, a sword from a Civil War battlefield near Petersburg, and a hat worn at the 2017 Women’s March.

“The Dance,” Amelia Langford

Abstract artist Wing Chow plans to connect her personal style with a historical photograph of the Natural Bridge, a geological formation in Rockbridge County that forms an arch. Chow’s art is characterized by amorphous, flowing forms and a cooler-toned palette – blues, greens, purples – and sometimes, the occasional pop of orange or pink. Talkov said the curators were particularly intrigued to see how her artistic style would marry with that of historical Virginia.

“Crux,” Wing Chow

“[Chow] doesn’t have a lot of historical pieces in her portfolio,” Talkov said. “But we really thought seeing her art style applied to historical objects and stories would be interesting.”

“Spring on Jupiter,” mural for Tiny Victory, Wing Chow

Wing Chow was drawn to the photo by the scale of the story it tells. She said, “More so than just the history of Virginia, [the photograph] relates to the history of the world as a whole.” She added, “You see these giant, geological formations that took millions of years to form and there’s this sublime quality about it. It’s incredible to realize that [these structures were] formed so many years before we could even fathom…and you come to terms with the fact that our lifespans are so short.”

As a firm believer in creating through consciousness and infusing spirituality into her work, Chow plans to symbolically depict the Natural Bridge as a portal into the metaphysical. Or as she puts it, “portals into other ways of thinking.”

“Candy Dragon,” Wing Chow

Alongside “Fresh Paint,” VMHC will launch the exhibit’s companion publication, called “The Story of Virginia: Highlights from the Virginia Museum of History and Culture,” compiling a survey of Virginia history into photographs.

The collaborative exhibition offers Richmonders the chance to watch these stories of Virginia history come to life as muralists paint their creations. As the artists create, their workspace will be open for people to observe and meet the artists. The featured artists will be working on their pieces between Sept. 10 and Oct. 12. A schedule can be found at virginiahistory.org.

“Fresh Paint” will officially open on Oct. 27 and will be on display through April 14, 2019.

Dinosaurs and Confederates: Inside “The Blue Ridge Barnum” Mark Cline’s Jurassic Triptank

John Donegan | July 25, 2018

Topics: Civil War, Civil War History, Confederacy, dinosaurs, Lexington, Natural Bridge, sculpture, virginia

The humidity of a southern June hung over us as we slogged through the facsimile of an old mining town. We approached rustic shacks for shade, only to find doors clawed in, furniture smashed, and baby brontosauruses running amok. Ahead, a building loomed with its front sign smeared and off-kilter, lettered in a bright rectal green: The Slime Theater. Three green, mucus-esque creatures with jarring King Crimson lips hung above the door– the obvious culprits for the name. I ducked as I went inside–machismo aside, I was a lone journalist and this was Slimeball Territory.

Slimeball Territory

The last building I entered, dangerous from a sloped floor, slid me into the wall, so I didn’t complain when we walked into the next room with benches, fans, and a flat screen. A TV played a fuzzy history segment on the Civil War, titled, “The Untold Battle of Natural Bridge.” The opening began like any other historical segment except from ambrotypes of Civil War generals accompanying the narration, it segwayed to pterodactyls and a machine-gun-stegosaurus. The screen cut to a man sitting fireside, deadpan gaze with a pipe, mid-toke. He explained the second coming of dinosaurs, in a battle that, frankly, never happened.

In a straw white fedora and magenta vest, his name is Mark Cline, the self-made owner of this Jurassic triptank. At 57, he’s the county’s most unnatural attraction, a persona riding between Mick Jagger and Willy Wonka, a self-proclaimed entrepreneur with 40 years of experience in fiberglass molding. We joined Cline in his eclectic roadside kingdom to talk about his Civil War theme park, “Dinosaur Kingdom II,” in rural Natural Bridge, Virginia.

Mark Cline in His Kingdom

We met Cline at a Pizza Hut, where he held forth on everything from religion to the power of suggestion. Even his bites of pizza were strategically placed, all while dressed like he popped out of an 1800s spaghetti western.  You get the feeling his brain is never truly at rest.

He was quick to rebuke criticism surrounding his park for its depiction of Union soldiers threatened by life-size fiberglass dinosaurs, annoyed by the recent media frenzy. ”They’re no more problematic now than they were years ago, it’s just that more people have a voice, more people have a stage, have these things [pointing to our smartphones], and getting out there with more opinions. Nothing’s new under the sun, none of it. Would you like a piece of pizza?”

Union Soldiers Cower from Velociraptor

He respects figures like Robert E. Lee, but was quick to deny empathy for Confederate troops, quoting Lee himself on historical remembrances. “I started doing a sculpture of Robert E. Lee a few years ago, before I knew what his wishes were,” Cline said. He refused to finish the sculpture, as General Lee himself once stated he wanted no statues, roads, or buildings dedicated to himself or the Confederate States. The war was over; it was time to rebuild.

Though some see the park as a monument to the Confederacy, it feels like escapism, a way to let local descendants of Civil War soldiers evade the awful truths of the past.

Union Soldier Dangles from T-Rex Mouth while Slimeballs Attack

Dinosaur Kingdom II offers a 16-acre stroll, guarded behind a palisade of utility poles along U.S. Route 11. From the opening scene of a decrepit mining town to the 20-foot-tall fiberglass T-Rex towering over the entrance with jaws agape while a lone Union soldier stands near a dislodged train, it provides a bizarre, alternative fiction of the Civil War. According to Cline, these jaws are meant to distract from our daily woes; he’s more entertainer than muse to madness. “Dinosaur Kingdom II is meant to entertain folks which, in turn, brings some societal benefits. Entertainment brings laughter and laughter has been proven to heal. No one gets killed at my park.”

You expect sympathy for Confederate revisionism with a spring of absurdity, only to be overwhelmed by the latter. There are disorienting walkways, Confederate slimeballs mounting bison as cavalry, a Southern Harambe stealing pants, two-headed turtle bomb specialists, a Confederate boy milking a stegosaurus, and Stonewall Jackson punching a T-Rex with a robotic arm. The park is meant to be bizarre, not scary or insensitive. “I just sort of mixed the Civil War history in with dinosaurs because I like them both. You know, people do what they like,” he said. “I’m not gonna go motocross riding or Nascar if I didn’t like [it]. I do what I like.”

Dinosaur Kingdom II reopened in 2016 after the original park was lost to a fire. It’s a nod to nostalgic 1950s mom-and-pop roadside attractions, yet since the local competition are caves and rock bridges, the park has surprisingly become a high-traffic attraction.

Born in 1961, Cline began his fascination with Jurassic subculture as a young child along the rolling hills of Waynesboro, Virginia. “I’m starting to believe I am the first because a lot of the things that I’m doing now I’ve started to see others come out with later,” he said, suggesting his creations long predate the 1993 masterpiece “Jurassic Park.”

I just sort of mixed the Civil War history in with dinosaurs because I like them both. You know, people do what they like.

Cline took interest in the Civil War in 1969 after the devastating Hurricane Camille, the second-most intense tropical cyclone to strike the United States, tolling up 259 dead, nine of whom were Cline’s relatives. Fresh off the coattails of grief, Cline found peace of mind in Gettysburg, where he and his surviving family members had evacuated before the storm. “While we were there, my mom, my brothers and I, we went through Gettysburg,” he said. “And while I was mainly into the museums at first, I took a strong liking to the battlefield.”

Native American sits with Dinosaur

Later, after high school, with no college plans and a love for paper maché, Cline began drifting. He hitchhiked across the country for a year before returning to Waynesboro, broke. A self-described hobo, he spent three months on park benches and against trees in Gypsy Hill Park. He didn’t seem to fit in. He wasn’t cut out for the military and had little interest in moving to a big city to follow artistic aspirations, but knew he couldn’t keep up his drifter lifestyle. Cline hitchhiked to the employment office in Waynesboro and got a job at Red Mill Manufacturing in Lyndhurst, where he began mixing resins for figurines. After about six weeks, his superior had him stay after work and taught him the process of making molds–a process Cline would take with him the rest of his life.

However, the process was slow-going, and in 1982 Cline experienced the first of many failures. “My first launched museum didn’t do anything. It was too far ahead of its time,” he said. “It was a struggle, I lost my first wife over it, poverty was commonplace for me, I didn’t know how I was going to pay my bills.”

Stonewall Jackson versus T-Rex

To Cline, his Civil War theme is not controversial. Whether the uniforms were gray or blue, the backlash would be all the same. “Well, I had a guy in Pennsylvania that was interested in me in building one of those up there for him. If I had done it up there, I’d have made the Confederacy the enemy. He was in Gettysburg. [The South] wouldn’t have been heroes up there.”

If anything, Cline knows how to bewilder. One April Fool’s Day, his favorite holiday, he stationed crashed saucers in a field outside Lexington. Another year, he placed a 50-foot-long Russian submarine in a lake near Gypsy Hill Park, where he used to sleep.

You gotta have something that’s real about you, oddly enough that comes from a guy that creates a lot of illusions.

But his stunts haven’t always been met with a cocked head or odd look. In 2001, one of his parks, Enchanted Castle Studio, went up in flames. A note in his mailbox described it as punishment for “Satanic art” from the “Good Lord,” referencing a comical sculpture resembling the devil. It survived, now relegated to his studio. The state police investigated the fire, which Cline believes was arson. No charges were filed. In an interview with The Roanoke Times, Cline kept his cheeky optimism: “P.T. Barnum had three [fires], so at least I’m one behind him.”

Cline is an illusionist, but refreshingly honest. He’s content living in a paradoxical space, real and fake together, and wants you to join him, too. “Without your morals, who are you? You’re a piece of shit. I mean, you gotta have something that’s real about you, oddly enough that comes from a guy that creates a lot of illusions.”

His brain races on to the next topic: His future. Having attained roadside celebrity status as he approaches his sixties, Cline is preparing for his next act: teaching. “I want to teach people how to build these figures because I’m the only one in the country doing it this way, this particular way,” Cline said. “Lee came here to Lexington, after the war. You know why? To teach. What does teaching do? It eradicates ignorance, and offers you a brighter future, right? How else can you explain education than by what it’s supposed to do? He understood this.”

And as the majority of his guests are young adults and college students, there is hope for Cline to pass down his fiberglass empire to future generations, with all the allure of fantasy and escapism. “I see myself as an entertainer, who knows how to build props,” he said. “I make my living off the props, but the props only tell the story to entertain people.”

As for the Civil War, it’s difficult to discern where Cline stands. He doesn’t clarify his views, either. “Just the very fact I live in this area, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee are buried here, and I think because they’re such icons here, and in some ways, very misunderstood,” he said.

Last Stop in Dinosaur Kingdom II

Cline believes anyone under the lens of the public eye long enough will be villainized. Maybe Cline romanticizes the lives of Jackson and Lee, much as he romanticizes his own. Whether this bizarre roadside attraction is a magnet for ignorance or an escape from the racist history that continues to fester throughout the South, a man like this, muddled in mystery, has only ever revealed shades of himself. I know one thing from this experience: I wouldn’t spend a night at this museum.

Photos by Madelyne Ashworth.

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