A new mural near the corner of Dewey Avenue and Main Street is nearly complete, and it’s packed with Sapulpa history.
The mural is “a gift to the city” from Joni Rogers-Kante and The Kante Group, CCR Construction, and the Mathesons, who own the building the mural is being painted on. Designed by Scott Taylor and his team at Colorpop Art Lab in Tulsa, the mural contains a dozen or so symbols of Sapulpa’s rich history, from the “Guardian of the Plains” Buffalo that sits on New Sapulpa Road, to the famed Harvey House, to the Burnett Mansion, which now houses the offices for The Make Sense Foundation and will soon reopen for special events.
Rogers-Kante was involved at the conception and provided the inspiration behind the gift of art. “I thought a mural bursting with color would lift our community’s spirit during this challenging time, as well as reflect the features of life and history of our town.”
Taylor and his company have worked with Joni Rogers-Kante in the past, and some of Colorpop’s work can be found in downtown Tulsa. He says the mural is close to complete. “We only have about seven to ten days left on it,” he told Sapulpa Times during a phone conversation on Friday afternoon.
The mural is over 1300 sq. ft. and had to be painted with spray paint because of the cooler weather and the age and texture of the building, according to Jamie Henderson, an artist with Colorpop who works exclusively on murals.
Henderson, who has been painting murals since she was fifteen, has lost track of how many she’s completed during her twenty-plus years of painting. One thing she still loves, though, is getting feedback from the community on what to put in them.
“In the one that we painted in downtown (Tulsa), there were so many requests for it that we actually added the Spaghetti Warehouse in one corner,” she said. The famed restaurant closed its downtown Tulsa location several years ago and the building is no longer there.
When she learned that she was memorializing another building that was no longer here—the former Harvey House Train Depot—she was thrilled.
The mural is expected to be completed before the end of January.
