Category: Murals

28 x 24 foot public mural
89 Water St, Hallowell, Maine

Visit HallowellMural.org for a detailed website devoted to this mural.

An exterior public mural with the 400+ year history of Hallowell, Maine, designed and painted by artist Chris Cart, and located on the exterior north wall of 89 Water Street.

The story of Hallowell echoes that of the new nation in its industry, education and culture.

The City is named for Benjamin Hallowell. one four of Boston merchants, the Kennebec Proprietors, who bought large tracts of land in what would become Maine from the Plymouth Colony—who in turn, in 1629, had been granted land originally claimed by the British monarchy.

In 2018, over lunch with a friend the idea of a history mural of the region grew wings—he had a wall, and I had brushes to paint a mural. Hallowell is a special little city on our historic Kennebec River. I wanted to capture the spirit of our community and tell its unique story.artist, Chris Cart

This mural has many unusual characters from the world of the arts.  Artists often live lives a bit out of the box.  Some of the people here are archetypal, some drawn from people in my life, but with my crowd I tried to tell a story of life, joy, music, sadness and hope.   People who have had pain and difficulty at times can see beyond the day to day to things of deeper significance.

My fiddler looks directly at us challenging us to see more.  The woman with the cigar box guitar looks off into her own collection of thoughts.  The mime, a friend of old, has a half painted face, hiding part of his identity, as well as holds a full mask he has removed.  The man holding the woman supports her with the care he gives the bird as well.  The pregnant woman is bringing a life into the world, juggling the spheres of energy, keeping it all going.

There is caring here, and friendship and pain, but they are one troupe together.

As the phoenix emerges from the ashes, so can man after devastation and loss.

Artists Chris Cart and Jen Greta Cart painted this incredible Phoenix Rising mural for the Travis Mills Foundation that depicts prosthetic wings, symbolizing a new beginning for our recalibrated veterans.

Created in the summer and fall of 2021, this 10 x 10 foot mural is a permanent addition to the grounds of the Travis Mills Foundation Retreat in the Belgrade Lakes Region of Maine.

Chris has been painting murals for over a decade. The large murals can be seen across Maine from the Capital Judicial Center in State capital to locations in Bath, Brunswick and Hallowell. He has two large murals in the greater Washington D.C. area and another across the country in the other Washington, in Seattle.

Jen Greta has worked with Chris on most of his murals. For her own paintings she usually works smaller, which can be seen at: JenGretaCart.com. Jumping into the mural realm in her own right, she is currently designing and painting a 1400 square foot mural, Many Stitches Hold up the Sky, for the City of Brunswick, Maine and Chris is bringing his mural expertise as her assistant for this project.

The Travis Mills Foundation Veterans Retreat is located on the former Elizabeth Arden Estate in the Belgrade Lakes Region of Maine. Travis and his wife Kelsey purchased the property in 2015 to create a retreat for our recalibrated veterans and their families. Today the facilities offers a wide range of activities on the grounds, from hiking, canoeing and golfing, ice fishing and snowshoeing, cooking and massage therapy to an extensive ropes course.

Though they may be battered, they are not broken.

Travis Mills Foundation Mission
The Travis Mills Foundation supports recalibrated veterans and their families through various programs that help these heroic men and women overcome physical and emotional obstacles, strengthen their families, and provide well-deserved rest and relaxation.

We support these veterans through our nationally recognized retreat located in the Belgrade Lakes Region of Maine. Veteran families who have been injured in active duty or as a result of their service to our nation receive an all-inclusive, all-expenses-paid, barrier-free experience in Maine where they participate in adaptive activities, bond with other veteran families, and enjoy much-needed rest and relaxation in Maine’s outdoors.

From the TMF website.

Posing for this permanent addition to Travis Mills Foundation is Taylor Morris, who, along with our founder, SSG Travis Mills, is one of five quadruple amputees to survive their injuries in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

recalibrated veteran
re·cal·i·brate /ˌrēˈkalibrāt/
calibrate (something) again or differently.
vet·er·an /ˈvedərən,ˈvetrən/
a person who has served in the military.

SSG Travis Mills coined the term “recalibrated veteran” after he lost portions of all of his limbs in an IED explosion while serving our in Afghanistan. He was injured and healed; he didn’t want to be called a “wounded warrior” – his wounds had healed. Instead, he referred to himself as recalibrated. He adjusted to his new normal; he recalibrated.

A 9 x 34 foot mural of celebrities in a bar. The mural is at Patsy’s Restaurant in Tysons Corner outside Washington, D.C. Painted in 2019 with fellow mural artist John Gable.  Patsy’s Great American Restaurant.

A 16 by 34 foot mural created with artist John Gable for Patsy’s Great American Restaurant in Tyson’s Corner, outside of Washington D.C.

No history of ship building in the Americas could be complete without a major section on Bath, Maine. Ships from Bath have been known in the ports of the world for many centuries.

This is the mural I painted in the summer of 2016 for the Maine Street Bath organization.  It is 4 x 22 feet, painted on Alupanel – 2 side aluminum panels with a plastic solid core, one surface enameled for paint.  I used 1Shot signage enamels.

(An article in the Portland Press Herald about the mural.)

I have a new set of 6, 5 x 7 inch, fine art greeting cards of the mural you can buy here.

The mural is installed on a curved wall which fell in well with my design idea of having all the forms bend and twist around each other.  I tell the story of Bath’s history and the importance of ships, travel, ship building, ice cutting…this is a town with a rich maritime story from the earliest days of ships of sail through and into the 21st century of ships of steel and beyond.

The mural references Bath Iron Works, Bath City Hall, the trolley.  For more than 50 years, before the age of electricity, ice cutting was a major industry for the Kennebec river.  People cut blocks of ice from river and adjacent lakes and ponds and shipped it south all along the eastern seaboard and as far away as the a Caribbean islands.  Kennebec ice was prized for its clean and pure color and flavor.

No history of ship building in the Americas could be complete without a major section on Bath, Maine.  Ships from Bath have been known in the ports of the world for many centuries.

This is a 14 x 40 foot mural I was commissioned through the Percent for Arts Program to paint for the new Capital Judicial Center in Maine’s state capital of Augusta.  The mural is titled Kennebec and tells of the history and importance of the river to Maine.

For more than 4 centuries the river was the major highway, artery  connecting Maine literally with the ports of the rest of the world.

In the mural the river and sky are continuous but the various time periods fold into each other.

I kept the palette for this mural intentionally subdued to be in keeping with the serious and quiet setting in the lobby of the courtrooms.

I wanted to show the ways people lived, worked and played along the river as they built this region.

8 x 32 foot public mural
11 Pleasant St, Brunswick, Maine
Sponsor: Brunswick Trinidad Sister City Association

The Brunswick-Trinidad Sister City Association, sponsored this mural in Brunswick, Maine, celebrating Brunswick’s friendship with Trinidad, Cuba. Joshua Chamberlain, Henry Longfellow, James Bowdoin, José Marti, Harriet Beecher Stowe are among the 50 Mainers and Cubans represented in the joyful throng dancing through the painting.  The mural measures 8 x 32 feet and is located at 11 Pleasant Street, Brunswick.

The Mural was finished and hung in 2008. I had 4 indispensable assistants for this mural.  Jen, my wife, is a constant aid in these big mural projects.  Here she was a model, a huge help enlarging and transferring the initial drawings and most importantly she plied her brush skills painting many of the detail sections of the wall, including a lot of the “artwork” included in the piece.  Without the brains and skills of Ernest (Bev) Bevilacqua and Dan Atkins we would not have had a wall to hang the mural on.  Their brilliant plans and skills in construction were key.   And finally I need to thank Susan Weems who launched this project and called me to paint it, and who kept us all going throughout the long process of creating a mural.