You’ve probably seen at least one of Patrick Hershberger’s works around Kalamazoo. Hershberger is also known by the name Bonus Saves. He likes to paint murals of animals, landscapes, and his signature images of skull bunnies - which look like skeletons wearing bunny suits.
At the end of this month, he’ll start on one of his largest murals ever - underneath the bridge near Veterans Memorial Park on the eastside of downtown.
The public gets to be part of it. Bonus Saves will let Kalamazoo residents vote on different panels of the painting. You can cast your vote here. Voting ends Thursday, August 25th.
It will be a more than 90-foot-long painting that depicts the many faces of the Kalamazoo River. Bonus Saves says he chose that spot because it gets a lot of traffic - and not just for recreation.
“Yeah, it’s a daily commute and that’s why I think when people pass through it - regardless of if they’re using it for fun or for just their everyday - it looks at different elements of that river and how we utilized it over the past and how we’re doing it in the present,” he says.
The wall he’s going to paint happens to belong to the Michigan Department of Transportation and it had one request - the mural should be a community project. So, Bonus Saves drew two options for each of the six panels.
Two of the panels will show local wildlife, one will have Kalamazoo’s bygone celery industry, and then there’s a nod to Veterans Memorial Park - a portrait of Emma Didlake, a World War II veteran who moved to Detroit in 1944.
“Where then she got involved in Civil Rights with Martin Luther King Jr., was friends with Rosa Parks and did marches and just was really a vibrant part of that movement. And so she just had this really rich history. She met with President Obama last year because she was one of the last remaining World War II veterans of her age. And she died like a month after meeting him,” says Bonus Saves.
The mural doesn’t just show the positive aspects of the river and local history. The pollution from Kalamazoo’s paper mills is present too.
“And there’s a roll of paper that’s kind of leading into a river and there’s like the murky depths are PCBs along with native fish and birds and plants,” says Bonus Saves.
Because of PCB contamination from the old paper mills, people can’t eat fish out of the Kalamazoo River without the risk of serious health issues. Bonus Saves says his panel on the river’s “catch and release” mandate was a special request from the Edison and Eastside neighborhood associations.
“Just pushing that message out to people because there are so many people that still live along the river, by it and come and fish. And they eat those fish and none of those fish are safe to eat,” he says.
Alongside the safety info, the panel shows a person holding a large fish. Bonus Saves says hopefully that person will be replaced by a real Kalamazoo resident.
“Anyone that wants to submit an image for themselves or their family fishing around Kalamazoo - doesn’t have to be on the Kalamazoo river, just somewhere in Kalamazoo. One person will be chosen as the final image of for the catch and release program," he says.
When you look at the choices for a single panel side by side, they look pretty similar. If there’s one difference it’s usually the choice of a realistic picture or the artist’s own interpretation.
Take the paper mill painting for example. One of the panels shows a paper roll surrounded by typical wildlife you’d see in Southwest Michigan. The other has a large fish suspended in midair that swallows pollution coming from a tiny smoke stack.
“Again not realistic, but at the same time it’s more representational of, you know, what we put into the river and how that’s affected nature,” says Bonus Saves.
You can cast your vote for which paintings you would like to see on the Kalamazoo River mural herethrough Thursday, August 25th.
