The mural of performing artists on Pioneer Avenue in front of Nomar received a new addition of characters by artist Tom Reed and the wall reaches its 40th year anniversary this summer with the original 12 characters painted in the summer of 1985.
Tom Reed, now a resident of Baker City, Oregon, added images last summer, 2024, also. He explained how the craft processes work. He said that when he sought out the original group of artists; the silhouette images were traced using a portable spotlight and he used that technique again this year, but completing it on solstice and the impact of where light was located in the sky made it difficult to create accurate life size shadows. He explained in an email to Adele Person at Bunnell how the first set of portraits were created and she shared it with KBBI explaining that he worked with artists by appointment to find poses that they both were partial to. Carter chose the original portraits for their talents and contributions to performing arts in town.
Additions this year include: Joel Pietsch from the Harbor School, Jennifer Norton (executive director for Pier One Theatre), Cathy Stingly playing the fiddle, musicians Nelton Palma and Jennifer King, dancer and choreographer Breezy Berryman and Ireland Styyvar.
The suggestions for the newest additions were submitted by Homer Council on the Arts, Pier One Theatre, Opus and Bunnell and the final choices “were drawn out of a hat” according to employees at Homer City Hall.
On Friday, Reed explained the benefit of adding performing artist portraits to the wall, “you know, they remain in our reality because the images are physical. Otherwise, performing arts disappear.”
The rest of his comment was covered by traffic noise but the essence was that the ephemeral aspect of the performing arts are lost in time, despite a better ability to record the audio and video components than technology had available in the 1980’s and earlier. The wall provides a physical and visual feature to provide to community memory. Reed also noted that the actual title of the wall is “A Tribute to the Performing Artist” even though it is typically referred to as the Nomar Wall.
Additional contributions to the portrait identities have been provided to other Homer residents. For example, Adele Person has created a spreadsheet on the performer identities and Dave Webster has provided a video commentary of the names to a community post on FaceBook that has received comments and identification confirmation from many community members, as well.
