By Bob Arnold
Wesson Friends of the Library (FOL) officially gifted the community with its first town wall mural at a ribbon cutting ceremony last month where it can be viewed in the Susan Alsbury Garden behind the outdoor library pavilion.
“Wesson Public Library (WPL) is doing remarkable things, and the mural is icing on the cake,” Librarian Marilyn Britt told nearly 100 persons who received the gift.
Wesson Chamber of Commerce officials cut the ribbon. Wesson Garden Club helped beautify the event location. The Wesson Attendance Center Beta Club volunteered as greeters and helpers. Representatives from Wesson businesses, Wesson Lion’s Club, American Legion Post #79 in Wesson, Wesson News, Town of Wesson, Jessica Breazeale Consulting and Founder’s Day queen Abbey Berch and princesses Callie Duplantis and Kalana Nhem celebrated the occasion.
The mural – a vision of WPL Librarian Britt inspired by those she saw on a drive through another town – became a project of Wesson Friends of the Library (FOL) after Britt shared her thoughts with its members and depicts shelves of classic and modern books, some written by Mississippi authors and The Holy Bible, with youthful readers leaning against them under a cloudy blue sky featuring the words of Garrison Keillor that “a book is a gift you can open again and again.”
“I thought Wesson needed its own mural, too,” Britt says.
FOL, which commissioned Brookhaven-based artist Montana Beeson, a Wesson native, to capture Britt’s vision and ideas of its members on the mural, hosted the ribbon cutting highlighted by guest speaker Walt Grayson who also covered the event on his WJTV Jackson “Daily Sip” television program Friday, November 1.
Pointing to the mural at the event, Grayson, a beloved personality, television feature reporter, writer and producer, host of “Mississippi Roads,” and author of four books, talked about story telling within the context of the wall painting: “You tell a story, and people know what’s going on. Jesus did that. Other than the Sermon on the Mount, which also has a lot of stories and parables in it, all of his other sermons were parables or stories. Stories are so important. You can look at this and you see the stories that have been told – a bunch of them. I’ve got some about Wesson in my books, I think. I’ll have to go back and re-read them. If I didn’t, I meant to.”
On behalf of FOL, Britt advanced the mural project in a conversation with Beeson after she observed her painting windows at Christy Shaw’s C&L Treasures on Route 51. “She thought it would be wonderful for a native Wesson artist to paint the town’s first mural, and I was on board,” Beeson recalls.
Beeson describes herself as “a Jane of all trades” like her grandparents and all my ancestors – “from music, art, writing to making local honey.” “I have two music albums on iTunes,” she says. “I have art in multiple vendor malls. I homeschool my boys, and I’m actually a nurse by profession.” With the mural project, she says “I’m finally getting started doing what I was meant to do. All my life God has been preparing me for something special and I’m just getting started on the outward display of that plan.”
After a few phone calls, emails, and going back to the drawing board multiple times trying to incorporate the vision of Britt and FOL members, the mural project took a couple of months to complete.
In painting the mural, Beeson says she wanted to bring more life to the garden area that the Wesson Garden Club created.. “I want to encourage people -- but especially children -- to read,” she explains. “So I prayed and asked God to help me, and here we are.”
At the Friends of the Library (FOL) ribbon cutting ceremony to dedicate the first town mural, Librarian Marilyn Britt announced FOL has been awarded a Home Deport grant to create a town museum and meeting space.
The grant will fund renovation of the former Boy Scouts building at 1915 Beech Street adjacent the municipal park.
The new FOL project will take at least a month complete.
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