Nature Inspires, Bridge Gets a New Look

Artist Kurt Eagleman addressing the crowd gathered at the mural dedication in November.

~by Jeff Tryon

While Nashville’s Salt Creek Trail provides a nature walk along the creek from the intersection of state roads 46 and 135 to the YMCA, it also passes under the state highway’s big concrete bridge. Everyone who uses the trail would agree the bridge was the least attractive part of the walk—until now.

The Nashville Arts and Entertainment Commission wanted to see more public art around town. They were in talks with local artist Kurt Eagleman about painting a mural in town on the side of the Heritage Mall when the idea of a mural under the bridge came up.

Funding was available through a grant from the Indiana Destination Development Corporation, a group supporting public art grants through the state. The Brown County Community Foundation also helped make the project happen.

“It was a real community effort from two great organizations in the community who want to beautify and better our community,” said Eagleman. “Only three of these matching grants were given out in the state, and we were lucky enough to be selected.”

With funding in hand, and the location in mind, the young artist drafted and submitted the design inspired by the nature that surrounds the Salt Creek Trail and the wildlife that makes Brown County special.

Eagleman felt the underneath of the old bridge looked “dingy and derelict,” so he wanted to take it in the opposite direction with a design that was bright, cheerful, and colorful.

“Since this is a trail for sports and families, I thought it should be something exciting and invigorating while you were out on the trail,” he said. “I wanted to make sure to include big bright shapes and colors but also small details that you would notice, maybe not everything at once, but something different every time.

“I also wanted to make sure that we included some teachable moments, so each of the sections feature a predator/prey interaction. As you walk through the mural it moves from dawn, midday, dusk, to evening. It’s my stylistic approach to a holistic ecosystem and the nature that surrounds us.

“It’s the intersection between art and nature that makes Brown County such a special and unique place, and different than the rest of Indiana,” Eagleman said. “We also have such a strong sense of community, where people want the best for each other and for the town. I feel really lucky to be born and raised here and even more honored to come back and add something back to the beauty and what makes this town so special and unique.”

His father, Jim Eagleman, was the Brown County State Park naturalist for 40 years and gave him a great appreciation for nature which influences his artwork.

Kurt said he has always been interested in art, but only started pursuing it full time in the fallout of the pandemic, which he said “caused a cosmic shift” towards only pursuing things that were going to be fulfilling.

He fell into doing murals as a way to generate an income. Getting to beautify and help shape the town and community that he loves is just a bonus. This was his third mural in town. The other ones are on the side of the Mulberry Cottage, and on the side of the Heritage Mall.

Eagleman said he is completely self-taught with this type of artwork, but he learned the basics from online educational videos.

“The rest is just on-the-job training,” he said. “It’s a big production and lots of moving parts, including materials and equipment, so you need to make sure you have a plan each day or it can be completely overwhelming. Especially if it’s just you or a small crew. It has been a great lesson in getting everything in order before I start and taking the time to do it right.”

He said the project has forced him to get better at patience and organization, two things he’s not particularly great at.

Eagleman counts himself lucky to have had fantastic art teachers in the community growing up, in particular Patty Rhoden Bartels, who helped shape his understanding of impressionist painting. This really sparked an interest and pushed him into starting to paint.

“I love the rich history of art in our community,” he said. “We were once a thriving art destination, and I like to think we still are, and will be in the future. For my mural in the Heritage Mall alleyway, I was very much influenced by our history. In fact that entire mural is a sort of depiction of how Brown County came to be an artist colony and what some of the locals thought about these outside artists. I feature some the works of Gustav Baumann and Frank Hohenberger.”

Eagleman will be taking time this winter to focus on creating more work, doing lots of art projects he has put off since starting the murals. He hopes to get some of his artwork into one of the local art galleries and is considering applying for an artist residency to further develop his craft. He has an art studio in town, where he paints and does different projects other than large scale murals.

“I am staying here in Brown County and go back and forth between here and New York City, where my partner lives,” Eagleman said. “We love to have both the country and city as sources of inspiration and feel like we have the best of both worlds: the excitement and vastness of the city and close sense of community and serenity of nature we have here in Brown County.”