July 26 — The art of murals

Puyallup, Sumner depict city history through art, draw tourism

Roxanne Cooke / of the Herald

When Puyallup demolished a building to make way for a new train station, an interesting piece of history was uncovered.

Workers found a 1910 advertisement for Fisher Flour – the company popular for The Puyallup Fair’s scrumptious scones – painted on a wall that had been concealed within the building.

The Puyallup Heritage Arts Foundation quickly made a move to have the advertisement repainted and restored for use as a historical mural.

The Fisher Flour mural is just one example of Puyallup and Sumner’s endeavor to show locals how their cities have transformed over the years and remind them that change in a city, no matter how small, is a part of life.

“We’re teaching about the past,” said Diane Kienholz, president of the Puyallup Heritage Arts Foundation. “We’re teaching about our city’s history through art.”

Aside from the historic advertisement found on Meridian, Puyallup’s murals depict a number of historical scenes, including Meeker Mansion in the early 20th century, Puyallup Indians and the old train depot.

In Sumner, murals painted on downtown buildings illustrate the city’s logging days, its hops industry and its dusty city streets in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Murals are a fairly recent trend in the two cities; the oldest ones were painted in Sumner in 1990.

Paul Cislo painted all four murals in Sumner based on historical photographs from the city’s Ryan House Museum, said Vicki Connor, curator of the Ryan House Museum and president of the Sumner Historical Society.

Sumner Rotary and the former Sumner Promotion Association (now the Sumner Downtown Association) arranged for the murals as a method of stimulating interest in downtown Sumner, said councilmember Mike Connor.

Murals in Sumner highlight the rural character of the town and tie the history to that of the surrounding area, Mike Connor said.

Most of Sumner’s murals were painted in the early 1990s, with the exception of the oval mural on Cherry Avenue that depicts a hops kiln. That particular painting was done in 1998.

The paint on most of Puyallup’s murals is even fresher – its earliest mural was painted in 1998 and its newest in 2003.

A group of interested residents formed the Puyallup Heritage Arts Foundation in 1999 to get more murals painted in the city, Kienholz said.

“Our focus is to place art that reflects our city’s history and depicts our past,” she said.

The residents conducted research on other cities with murals to see the pros and cons of the murals project, Kienholz said. Their 501(c)(3) status allowed them to receive funding from the hotel/motel tax, which helped pay for the more than dozen murals they commissioned artists to paint.

The then-new Puyallup Heritage Arts Foundation decided to hire different artists for each mural, using a committee comprised of residents, city council members and others to make selections.

“We wanted a variety of artists,” Kienholz said.

Cislo, the Sumner muralist, painted the Puyallup Tourist Camp mural, and Darrell Harlow, popular for painting murals in other cities, painted Puyallup’s first two and the seven that can be found at the Puyallup fairgrounds.

Some murals had more than one artist, including the South Hill logging mural. Artist Bob Henry painted it with assistance from a Rogers High School student Crystal Mahre, who was a senior at the time.

Portrayals of Puyallup’s history in murals were usually based on photographs, Kienholz said.

Between 1998 and 2003, Puyallup’s number of murals went from zero to 17. The wall paintings stopped there, though.

The Puyallup Heritage Arts Foundation can no longer afford to have murals painted because it doesn’t qualify for the hotel/motel tax anymore, Kienholz said.

Changes in the requirements mean that only city-owned buildings can be used for murals, and those are few and far between or too new to have a mural painted on their walls, she said.

Despite this issue, Kienholz said the organization probably won’t seek out a solution.

“Maybe any more murals would be too many,” she said.

With the 17 murals the group managed to put up in less than a decade, there’s probably enough history to last awhile and continue to draw in more tourists.

“People that come to our city – either new or visiting – don’t have to go to the library to learn about our history,” Kienholz said.