The largest public art project in the four-year history of the Traverse City Arts Commission will be unveiled in the Clinch Park tunnel Monday. The new mural installation, which honors the cultural heritage of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians and other Woodland Indians, represents a healing collaboration between the city and Tribe – one that leaders hope to build on with a cultural exchange Monday and a proposal to rename Union Street Dam Park to Ottaway Park.

Image360 crew were busy in the Clinch Park tunnel Friday installing 19 four-by-eight-foot panels displaying digitized mural artwork by Colorado artist Bobby MaGee Lopez, an installation that will be called the Mezinaadin Exhibition. The panels depict various aspects of Native American culture in bold, colorful graphics (pictured), along with a stylized form of calligraphy Lopez calls “glyphitti,” which combines ethnic characters and symbols “to create an aesthetic version of a culture.” The Clinch tunnel itself has been upgraded to showcase the murals, with new perimeter lighting surrounding every panel and overhead lights replaced with modern fixtures. The mural panels are affixed to (rather than painted directly on) the tunnel’s walls, which were scraped, primed, and repainted prior to the installation. A sound system was once proposed to accompany the artwork, but was eliminated to cut costs and to accommodate sensory-sensitive individuals who could be impacted by the tunnel’s echoing effects.

City and GT Band representatives will host a public ribbon cutting at 4pm Monday on the Clinch Park side of the tunnel to commemorate the artwork. The ceremony will include comments from Tribal Chairman Thurlow “Sam” McClellan, Arts Commission Chair Debbie Hershey, and Traverse City Mayor Jim Carruthers, as well as native drumming and a prayer. The tunnel project – initially budgeted at $70,000 – came in closer to $54,000 and was primarily funded by a nearly $44,000 two-percent grant from the Tribe, as well as funds from the city’s Public Art Trust Fund.

Lopez was selected from among 31 artists across the country through a public-call-for-entries process to complete the tunnel project. He flew to Traverse City in July to meet for several hours with GT Band members to gather their feedback on what they hoped to see depicted – or not – on the tunnel walls.

“We invited the community to come, and a majority of their statements were about (including) wildlife, our clan totems, incorporating a lot of floral work,” says Cindy Winslow, a GT Band member and museum director of the Eyaawing Museum in Peshawbestown. “We were trying to get that idea of who we are (across) through imagery. We have a lot of totems. We are fishing people, we are water people, we are woodland people. I was looking for an artist…who would be understanding that we have a different way of life than non-tribal people.”

Based on the Tribe's input – as well as museum photos of native individuals and culture provided by Winslow  – Lopez created 31 concept mural panels. In ensuing weeks, he worked with city staff and GT Band representatives by email to painstakingly winnow down the pieces to 19 panels, taking some aspects of images out or adding or combining others to ensure accuracy in every frame. “He really took our ideas and turned them into very nice pieces,” says Winslow. “I’m quite happy with the way that it turned out. I was making sure there wasn’t anything that was going to be offensive for us, because this is my tribe and Traverse City is where I live, so I wanted to make sure it was appropriate.”

Cultural sensitivity was crucial to all parties involved, given the painful origins of the tunnel project. In 2013, while Clinch Park was under reconstruction, city staff painted over Anishinaabek paintings by artist Lois Beardslee that had been in the tunnel since the mid-1990s. Though the stencil paintings were deteriorating and covered by graffiti in parts, their erasure was a hurtful blow to many local tribal members. City and GT Band representatives have been in talks over the last six years about how to reintroduce indigenous artwork in Clinch Park, which served as an important gathering space for local Native Americans for hundreds of years. Lopez was also committed to that goal, saying he has “meditated upon the Anishinaabe until the spirit of their visions have united with my own.”

Hershey says completing the tunnel project was her number-one goal when she took over as chair of the Arts Commission. “If I do nothing else, I want this art in the tunnel,” she says. “We have taken a lot of care to get it right, and I believe it is. It’s the public art project that brought everyone together...and I think it is just stunning.” The mural installation was conceived as a rotating exhibition, allowing for the possibility of panels to be changed out every several years. “But even if it changes, I hope - and I think the Tribe is expecting – there will always be indigenous artwork in there,” Hershey says.

The tunnel project has opened the door to further collaboration between the GT Band and city, according to leaders of both communities. Leanne Alber, executive assistant to Tribal Chairman McClellan, says the Tribe appreciated “the time and effort dedicated to honoring the Anishinaabe ancestral connections to this area, from an indigenous perspective,” as well as “the relationships (that) developed during this project.” She adds: “We are looking forward to potential future collaborations.” Ahead of Monday’s ribbon cutting, city commissioners and several city department heads will visit with GT Band leaders in Peshawbestown and tour the Eyaawing Museum, which has both rotating and permanent exhibits on the history of the Grand Traverse Band of Anishinaabek. “We felt that reaching out and learning more of their culture and understanding them better as neighbors, partners, and friends within our community was important,” says City Manager Marty Colburn.

City leaders will also soon consider renaming Union Street Dam Park in downtown Traverse City to Ottaway Park, in honor of the Boardman River’s original historical name Ottaway River. Traverse City Parks and Recreation commissioners unanimously approved a motion to rename the park this month, according to Parks and Recreation Superintendent Derek Melville, with the motion set to come next to city commissioners for approval. The park’s renaming would take place when the FishPass project is complete at the site to commemorate the next chapter of the park, which is part of the Boardman River Dams Project – a project in which both the city and Tribe are key partners.

City staff and GT Band members also hope to partner on more public art projects. Each of Lopez’s panels has a smaller handpainted counterpart created by the artist, which are being delivered to the city and could be offered to the GT Band to display or put up at other sites. Colburn says partnering on public art with the Tribe provides “another means of working together and appreciating each other's cultural significances.” Winslow agrees. “I would like to see more native artwork throughout Traverse City in general,” she says. “It makes visitors more aware that we are here and still around and have a presence. This was a really positive experience on my end working with Traverse City, so I would love to see more collaborations.”