CHAUNCEY, Ohio — Earlier this summer, the village of Chauncey unveiled a new mural celebrating the town’s history.
The artwork on its village hall celebrates Chauncey’s mining and cultural history and is the first of three currently slated for the village, Chauncey Village Council member Connaught Cullen told the Independent. It was dedicated in a ceremony held Aug. 27.
Two additional murals will follow: one at the Chauncey Friendly Circle and the other on a Main Street building formerly occupied by Integrated Services for Behavioral Health. Cullen, who is also chair of the village’s parks and recreation committee, told the Independent that one of the next murals will spotlight salt mining, and the other will focus on miners.
Cullen said the parks and recreation committee is working with artists to refine the murals, and that she can’t yet share more details.
Kaleigh Cox, an eighth-grade English teacher at Logan-Hocking Middle School and Nelsonville resident, painted the art adorning village hall. She told the Independent this was her first professional mural and that she got the job after painting a mural of Nelsonville on her garage. She said she views her work on the village hall mural, paid for through a grant from the America 250-Ohio Commission, as a way of giving back to the community.
The aspects of Chauncey’s past and present that were featured in the mural were chosen by polling village residents, Cullen said.
To prepare for the project, Cox worked with Tom O’Grady, development director and outreach director emeritus at the Southeast Ohio History Center, collecting reference images for historic sites featured in the mural. O’Grady did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
Cox included depictions of the town’s former bell tower on High Street, the Weber zinc mine, a salt mine, the New-York Coal Company Mine No. 25, the town’s old theater, the old Chauncey-Dover High School stadium, Sunday Creek and the Baileys Trail System, according to a post on the Village of Chauncey Facebook page.
The colors of the mural were inspired by True Pigments, a social enterprise of Rural Action, which treats acid mine drainage and turns pollutants into usable paint. Original plans were to utilize paints directly from True Pigments, but paint production is paused as True Pigments constructs a new facility in nearby Millfield, Ohio.
Cullen views the new village hall mural as one way of beautifying the village.
“I’m all about beautifying the village,” Cullen said. “There’s been a lot of work done to make things look improved, so I thought a mural would be great.”
