Artist Christopher Santer poses in front of his favorite piece of the Point Park flood wall mural he’s painted: a historic scene depicting a Wright Brothers plane flying over downtown Parkersburg in 1910. (Photo by Matty Lamp)

PARKERSBURG — A new addition to the Point Park mural was finished Wednesday afternoon, completing the mural for the foreseeable future.

Several artists have been chipping away at the mural for the past five years, hoping to showcase the history and importance of the region in a vivid way.

This summer, artist Christopher Santer has been working on bridging the two existing pieces of the mural by finishing the edges and painting a smattering of autumn leaves. He said the entire mural spans around 630 feet, which is more than two football fields.

Santer is originally from Parkersburg and has been making the trip from Minnesota every summer since the start of the project. He said his lifelong friend and local business owner Edward Escandon enlisted his help to help him plan the mural in 2018, and he has been working on it ever since.

“He was like ‘if we’re going to do something with this wall, don’t hang a bunch of ugly ads. Let’s make something beautiful,'” Santer said. “Part of it was thinking of it as a gateway to West Virginia, not just local.”

The right side of the flood wall mural displays multiple historic scenes painted by Christopher Santer, Emma Romanowski, Belinda Armstrong, and Edward Escandon. (Photo by Matty Lamp)

Santer got to work making collages and drawing out ideas for the mural while Escandon started to think of ways to fund the project. The Parkersburg Floodwall Mural Project was then created, a non-profit that came out of Downtown PKB, to support the creation of the mural.

“The first two years, we raised all the money independently, without the city. The third year, the city came in with more money to keep going with this because it’s really popular,” Santer said.

During the rest of the year, Santers works as a K-12 art teacher at a Catholic school just outside of Minneapolis. He has been a teacher there for 24 years.

“It’s a great balance. I love working with them, teaching students, talking about art and beauty. But then I take on commissions. This one, a quite large one,” Santer said. “I’m working on something year round, but I save the big projects for summer or spring break. And if I have to, I use the weekends and things. So it really is a second job.”

The left side of the mural features a sprawling mountain scene and a musical staff with the first few notes and words to “Country Roads” by John Denver. On the other half of the mural, there are panels depicting historic Parkersburg scenes, such as the Blennerhassett Hotel, the Camden Theater, and even a Wright Brothers plane flying over downtown Parkersburg.

The left side of the mural, painted by Christopher Santer, starts with a musical staff with the notes to the first few words of “Country Roads,” by John Denver that blends into a mountain landscape. (Photo by Matty Lamp)

Along the top of the mural, there is a realistic painting of the Parkersburg-Belpre bridge, and the piers of the bridge separate the panels of the mural’s historic scenes. Santers said that painting the bridge was the hardest part of the mural for him to complete.

“It just became never-ending. And all the care I had to give to make the sandstone that, if you grew up here, you know it so well. We would park under that bridge as a kid downtown,” Santer said. “Taking photos and really getting those believable, and kind of the rusting of the bridge. I mean, that just took a lot of time to do what ended up being 260 feet.”

Santer also said getting used to painting while on a scissor lift took some time the first year because of the height and the swaying.

Some local artists that also worked on the mural include Emma Romanowski, Belinda Armstrong, and Abbie Burdge.

There is still one panel left for an artist to eventually paint over, but in terms of painting the other side of the floodwall past the entrance, Santer said it would be a lot more difficult to achieve and it may not happen.

“The land keeps dropping, and the wall keeps the same height. So it’s getting taller, and once you get on the other side, the land slopes up to the wall. I wouldn’t be able to use one of the scissor lifts. I’d have to have a picker arm going up and into it,” Santer said. “It just gets harder.”

Regardless of if the mural sees another expansion in the future, Santers said it has been rewarding to see the community enjoy watching the mural coming to life.

“It’s been overwhelming support. People have really loved that,” Santers said. “They stopped me continually while I was working to say how much they loved and appreciated what was going on down here.”

Matty Lamp can be reached at intern@newsandsentinel.com.