‘Underutilized strategy': Storm drain murals raise awareness for waterway pollution

At the end of June, visual artist and visionary painter Molly Chopin perched under a tarp, rain trickling down the sidewalk as she brushed paint onto the pavement. Slowly but surely, small splotches of color transformed into a landscape of longleaf pines and swirling water, all centered around a single storm drain. 

At the top of her mural were the words, “Keep our waterways clean and the earth evergreen,” a memo she selected to demonstrate the importance of keeping trash out of storm drains, which all lead to nearby creeks and eventually, Jordan Lake — a huge sourcing of drinking water for those in the Triangle. 

Chopin’s art, alongside many other storm drain murals throughout Chapel Hill, was commissioned by the Town of Chapel Hill as a part of the Storm Drain Murals project, which started in 2022 as a collaboration between the Community Arts and Culture division and Stormwater Management. Since then, 11 artists have created unique public art, from a tangled, colorful pipe mural to various landscapes of the distinct N.C. deciduous forests. Chopin’s mural on Rosemary Street is the most recent addition. 

About 1 million residents in the surrounding area get their drinking water from Jordan Lake. According to the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice, point source pollution has remained a huge problem for Jordan Lake since the 1960s, where the Triangle has continued to see drastic population increases that has left treatment infrastructure unable to keep up with the pace. 

Chopin’s piece resonates with both the aim of the project — to educate people about storm drains and their direct connection to local waterways — and with her own beliefs about nature and people, she said. 

“I create a lot of art that is intended to remind people of the spiritual nature of existence, so a lot of my work does involve landscapes, elements of nature and trying to put face to unseen energies as well as to render that which is seen,” she said. “And to create imagery to remind people of that interconnectedness between the two.”

Nature shows up in much of Chopin’s work, she said, including what she refers to as a “system of symbiosis,” where multiple systems — both man-made and naturally occurring — feed into one another. 

Chopin’s painting includes both a landscape of longleaf pines and a rainbow, which Chopin also uses in much of her work, as well as a spiraling, geometric figure. This figure is known as the “seed of life,” which spiritually represents creation and the origin of all energy, she said, and is represented in numerous cultures. 

Earlier this year, local artist Luke Vandergriff painted a landscape at Chapel Hill High School of a creek near his home in Raleigh as part of the project. Vandergriff is both a musician and muralist, focusing on nature in his work. 

Vandergriff does not take most commissions, he said, but he was specifically interested in the Storm Drains project because of its dedication to making people more aware of where trash and water runoff goes. 

“I like to highlight the beauty that's already there,” he said. “And raise awareness for, and have people just kind of stop and be present, or just realize that ‘Hey, this right here is beautiful.’” 

Fellow local artist Kelly Schrader painted their mural, “I’ve Got Pipes On It,” in 2023. Instead of focusing on nature and landscape design, Schrader wanted to do something a bit different, utilizing bright colors in a collection of woven pipes to illustrate where water goes. 

Schrader worked with the Parks Department to determine where water was specifically moving from the storm drain they were commissioned to design at: Airport Gardens Housing Complex. In their painting, various pipes are labeled with Bolin Creek and Jordan Lake, with others indicating the outflow of that water onto the residents at the Complex. 

Personally, Schrader hates storm drains because they are creepy, so people do not normally think twice before throwing trash into them, they said. By making the art bold and bright, they said they hoped people might be more considerate. 

Steve Wright is the public art coordinator for the Community Arts and Culture division and a lifelong painter. While most people think public art is selected by the Town, community members are directly involved in the art that is selected, often including those that live near where the mural will be placed. 

“I tell artists: A wise muralist told me once, she said, ‘Think really hard about how many hours you need to spend on that mural, and then multiply it by four,’” he said. “I totally get [that] it's a lot of work. People always think art is fun — and I mean, it can be fun, and it can be really gratifying and beautiful and wonderful, but it can also be hard work.”

Every winter, the Town goes through an extensive selection process to choose artists for the project. The same applies to all other kinds of public art throughout Chapel Hill, Wright said. 

“Murals, I think, are maybe not an undervalued, but an underutilized strategy to improve communities,” Schrader said. “Murals give people a sense of place and a sense of belonging and a sense of pride over where they come from.”

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