The facade of Fairbanks City Hall is set to feature a pair of murals designed by Alaska Native artists in concert with local Native organizations and Lower 48 researchers as part of a project funded by the National Science Foundation.
But some Fairbanks City Council members said Monday they wish they’d gotten more of a heads up about the project, which Mayor Mindy O’Neall applauded last week in the press release and call for volunteers that announced the plans, saying the artwork will show “how powerful our community can be when we come together to honor the land and each other.”
That announcement was made June 3, a Wednesday, with artists set to begin the project over the weekend.
Mural painting underway
Music played on the sidewalk beneath Lindsey Maillard Sunday as she painted blueberries that took on a plump, smooth look, despite City Hall’s rough exterior. Higher up on the scaffolding, others traced the curving edges of wild roses.
It was mid-afternoon when Maillard climbed down for a break, just as grey clouds rolled in, threatening rain. Asked about the work, she contemplated the partially finished piece – and what she hopes it accomplishes.
“It’s an opportunity for us to share what we love, and maybe, hopefully, that will unite us within our community. Like, who doesn’t love the mountain ranges? Who doesn’t love, like, seeing a herd of caribou? Who doesn’t love our beautiful sunsets, and wild plants and berries?” she said.
Denali rises near the center of the composition, and caribou run in the foreground. The color scheme is bright and vernal, including pink, yellow and lavender. Maillard said it's meant to contrast with its surroundings when things get cold and dark.
“Because Fairbanks is so – we have such long winters – I really wanted to have vibrant, colorful pieces so that, like, in the wintertime, our downtown didn’t feel so grey and, you know, kind of depressing in our long winter,” she said.
This mural is on the left side of City Hall's symmetrical facade, and another will be painted on the right side, Maillard said. She expects they'll be finished within a couple weeks.
Maillard’s family is from Chena Village, and she’s currently studying at the Institute of American Indian Arts in New Mexico. She’s part of the group of artists who helped develop the murals' designs, in collaboration with Denakkanaaga and Native Movement. Other artists include Amber Webb, Colleen Firmin Thomas and Bethany Grant, according to the city press release.
The murals are part of a larger project funded by a $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, in which researchers are working with Indigenous communities as they investigate the interaction of natural and social systems. The project, according to its NSF webpage, also examines the ability of Arctic urban communities to adapt to climate-induced changes.
“As researchers, we were always a little bit frustrated how, usually, our research is quite separated from real communities, and we were just brainstorming about how we can make a more meaningful contribution to give back to community,” Vera Kuklina, an associate professor at the University of Maryland who’s leading the project, said of the mural’s origins in an interview Sunday outside City Hall.
Kuklina is an Indigenous scholar who was born and raised in a Buryat village in Siberia, and she said she tries to pursue research that’s relevant to where she hails from, making a subarctic community like Fairbanks a good fit. She and her student have previously completed work in the area that was natural sciences-driven, focusing on how urban green spaces are changing, she said.
“But this time, we really wanted to see what people care about, what they want to preserve for next generations,” Kuklina said.
The project is connected to the Belmont Forum, an international consortium of science organizations, including NSF, that’s “dedicated to promoting transdisciplinary, transnational research to help understand, mitigate, and adapt to global environmental change,” according to the forum’s website. The project received NSF funding in 2024, and Kuklina said the researchers hosted a workshop in Fairbanks last year. She said they reached out to city leaders about the public art initiative in February when looking for places a mural could be installed.
City Council concerns
O’Neall, the mayor, first publicly announced plans for the City Hall murals about three days before artists began painting. That irritated a couple members of the city council.
At the regular meeting Monday night, Councilmember Sue Sprinkle said she wasn’t trying to be a “turd in the punchbowl,” but she said the short notice made it difficult to field phone calls from the public.
“People were really furious, and some people were excited. But I think, whether it’s lovely or it’s appropriate, I think it’s just a shame that we didn’t know it was happening,” she said.
City Chief of Staff Mike Sanders told the council Monday he asked for renderings of possible designs in April, and he said the administration had wanted the murals to go up in July or August after a more robust public process. But he said the city recently became aware of scheduling conflicts with the researchers that made it a “now or never” decision last week. O’Neall went with now.
“It wasn’t anything nefarious,” Sanders said. “Nobody was trying to cut the council out. Nobody was trying to get one over on the public or anything like that.”
A couple residents also raised concerns at Monday’s meeting about making changes to the building’s exterior, given that it’s on the National Register of Historic Places. Sanders said the city consulted with the state historian last week to ensure the mural project was OK before moving forward with it.
Councilmember Jerry Cleworth was the most vocal critic on the council on Monday. When presented with that tighter timeline, he said, the city should’ve opted not to push ahead with the murals.
“To not involve the council or the general public, I think, was a mistake,” he said.
O’Neall said at a Tuesday press availability that she believes the project is a great way to highlight Alaska Native artists, heritage and history. And she said her office sought to inform the public shortly after deciding to set things in motion.
“As soon as we knew it was going to happen during the weekend, we sent out a press release, made sure that the public was notified, that the council was notified and, you know, did the best we could to tell people what was going on,” she said.