Jonathan Brown
We’ll soon have a waterfall between Lakes Monona and Mendota. A massive, cascading mural will be unveiled on West Washington Avenue on Nov. 10.
Its working title is simply “The Waterfall,” though that may give way to “Technology in Motion.” Roughly 15 by 123 feet, it adorns the former AT&T building, 316 W. Washington Ave.
“The objective was to make the mural look like it’s in motion, falling down onto the awning, which I also designed,” says artist Jonathan Brown. He and a team of 10 worked on the mural’s painted panels at Brown’s Houston-based Modern Mosaics studio.
Brown says the mural includes nearly 500 full-color changing LED nodes. Also, “It has 15 really theatrical exterior lights and, in the ground in front of the building, a lot of lighting nodes trickling out to the street.”
Eric Hovde of Hovde Properties acquired the 10-story building in 2014. As part of the building’s renovation, the developer wanted to commission a work of art. Initially budgeted at $100,000, the mural will cost more than $500,000. The developer and the artist began their collaboration about a year and a half ago.
“Eric literally said the magic word,” says Brown. “He said, ‘What about a waterfall?’ That was it. The shape of the building was perfect for a waterfall.”
There were 54 international applicants for the Hovde commission, 10 from bordering states, three from Wisconsin and one from Madison. Brown was selected by Madison-based CODAworx, which connects purchasers with more than 17,000 artists worldwide. The firm was founded in 2012 by Terry Maxwell and Toni Sikes, founder of The Guild Sourceworks and Artful home, an art ecommerce site.
“I think this is a good step forward for the city of Madison,” says Nick Anderson, CODAworx online marketing manager. “There’s not a big budget for public art projects, and that’s a shame. So it’s exciting when developers like Hovde Properties are stepping in to fill that need and show some community pride.”
Another benefit to Madison will be two new residents.
“We’re buying a house here,” says Brown. “This is what I keep telling my fiancé. I need to summer here. I literally have fallen in love with this town. I really have.”
