'Echoes of Sarasota' Revives Historical Mural Project, Opens Tonight

Arts & Culture

Pictured: A mural by Regan Dunnick depicts the famous DeSoto Hotel, which once stood where Palm Avenue Fine Art is located today. Image courtesy of Palm Avenue Fine Art.

Powerwalking and perpetually late, desperately looking for gate numbers or signs to the nearest restroom, it’s understandable that few travelers really take the time to stop and appreciate the art in an airport. Time, tide, and the TSA wait for no one. But in SRQ’s case, this also means that a massive mural project celebrating the history of Sarasota has been sitting largely unnoticed for decades. With tonight’s opening of Echoes of Sarasota: A Historical Preservation, Palm Avenue Fine Art finally brings the work out of the terminal and into the gallery light.

“Sarasota deserves to see these,” says Gallery Director Colin Thomsen, “because each one is a piece of Sarasota history.”

Commissioned in 1989, the project comprises a total of 15 large-scale murals—five from painter Frank Hopper and 10 from illustrator Regan Dunnick. Together, the work commemorates the industries, arts, cultures and peoples who made Sarasota what it is. It amounts to roughly 465-square-feet of mural—and it’s all jockeying for space on the walls of Palm Avenue Fine Art.

Working in pastel on great 3’x10’ swaths of watercolor paper, Dunnick’s contributions highlight the artistic and agricultural sides of Sarasota’s history, each mural a careful collage of portraits and small scenes, historic buildings and the unsung heroes who have no name for the artist to scrawl next to them but built their community all the same. Previously, the work could be found hanging in the SRQ Airport Ticketing Office.

Hopper’s murals, all acrylic on 5’x9’ sheets of plywood, chronicle Sarasota’s history through five images of goods in transport. From a Florida Seminole gathering firewood and a conquistador wading ashore with trunks and chests, to an orange farmer at market, a Scottish golfer in full kit, and a beleaguered clown pushing a trunk fully his size, each represents a pivotal Floridian people and their industry. Fittingly enough, these were displayed in the baggage claim area.

Viewed together, says Thomsen, the collected murals present a valuable window to the past.

“Just in the last 10 years, Sarasota has transformed and grown,” says Thomsen. “And it’s important to look back and see how it was created and all of the different people who contributed.”

Echoes of Sarasota: A Historical Preservation opens tonight at Palm Avenue Fine Art with a reception from 5pm to 9pm.

Pictured: A mural by Regan Dunnick depicts the famous DeSoto Hotel, which once stood where Palm Avenue Fine Art is located today. Image courtesy of Palm Avenue Fine Art.

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