The newly-renovated Suwanee municipal court building will soon feature a three-story mural on the outside of the facility.
The building – which was Suwanee’s original city hall – received an expanded lobby to accommodate court session crowds, doubled court clerk workspace and added new space for the police Special Enforcement Unit. The building, which is almost 60-years-old, received a three-story addition, adding bout 8,600 square feet to the facility.
Suwanee has asked developers to commit one-percent of construction costs to public art, so the final touch to the new building will be a large mural painted on a three-story wall. Hapeville, Georgia muralist Lauren Pallotta Stumberg was selected by the Suwanee Public Art Commission out of the 24 artists from across the world who responded to the request for qualifications for the project.
Stumberg received her BS in fine arts from the University of Michigan, with post-graduate work with the University of the South Pacific. Her public art commissions can be seen in Norcross, Peoplestown, Hapeville, Cabbagetown, Decatur, Old Fourth Ward, Midtown and Southwest Atlanta. Stumberg leads Think Greatly, LLC, an art and design incubator in Atlanta which enables her to support public art development through community engagement and female-driven collaborations. She is represented by dk Gallery in Marietta.
A statement released by the city last week said a colorful abstract of magpies will cover the entire three-story wall and wrap around to the smaller retaining wall in front of the building. It will also include two free-standing five-foot-tall metal magpie sculptures. Stumberg frequently uses abstracted magpies in her work, having been inspired by an English nursery rhyme that translates one’s fortune based on the number of magpies one sees.
"It is this perception of the magpie that inspires my work – the notion that the bird is an omen of change, and change, good or bad, is often invaluable," said Stumberg. “In this way, the presence of the magpie is a calling to enter a crucible of the spirit. It asks you to rethink social norms, to shift perspectives, to be open to personal transformation.”
The city did not indicate when the mural would be finished.
