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Kenduskeag Stream Trail Mural
Kenduskeag Stream Trail Mural: Wildlife in Painted Layers
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The Kenduskeag Stream Trail Mural gives a downtown Bangor retaining wall the character of a wildlife gallery. Annette Sohns-Dodd and Peter Walls collaborated on the Franklin Street artwork, bringing colorful surroundings and carefully made animal images together at a stream-trail entrance. Its most distinctive feature is the meeting of two ways of painting: broad areas that transform the wall and separate shaped panels that bring creatures into sharper focus.
The mural occupies retaining walls behind the post office and county sheriff's offices, with views from Franklin Street and Central Street documented in Emily Burnham's original reporting. Bangor Beautiful continues to identify it among the public works of its founding artists. Approach through public pedestrian space, giving people using the street and trail entrance room to pass. There is no need to enter an office building to understand the artwork or its relationship with the nearby stream.
The division of work is particularly interesting. Burnham reported that Sohns-Dodd and volunteers painted abstract areas of color onto the wall before Walls installed detailed images on waterproof marine plywood. That construction gives the mural a physical layering beyond an ordinary painted surface. From an appropriate viewing position, consider the difference between the surrounding colors and the outlines of the animal forms. The creatures appear within a designed backdrop while retaining their own individual shapes.
Walls' own July 2022 account describes a longer preparation. He used the winter to make seven shaped panels inspired by stream wildlife while Sohns-Dodd planned the background. His photographs and captions identify a kingfisher, bass, trout, salmon, a dragonfly, a duck and a painted turtle. He describes moving from a loose plan through color decisions to installation. The account offers a professional maker's perspective on the finished work, showing how an outdoor encounter can depend on months of studio preparation.
The collaboration began after a gallery exhibition brought the artists together. The independent local reporting records permission from Penobscot County, which maintains the wall, and support from a Maine Arts Commission grant. Those facts help explain how a shared artistic idea reached a highly visible public surface. The site is useful to the mural's meaning: the depicted animals refer to the water corridor behind the artwork, connecting the subject with the place where a visitor stands.
A good way to look is to follow one animal from its outline into its surrounding color, then move to a very different form. A fish and a bird invite different kinds of attention to shape, movement and habitat. The painting offers an interpretation of local wildlife, so finding an animal on the wall does not promise a sighting on a particular walk. Enjoy the images as carefully made representations before deciding whether to continue along a presently suitable section of the trail.
For photographs, try a wider view that reveals the relationship between panels and wall, followed by a closer composition of a chosen creature. Keep both the artwork and the route clear of disturbance, and credit both artists when sharing. The mural rewards a visit focused on collaboration and making: shaped wood, painted concrete and a streamside subject joined into a public work that changes the experience of a functional city wall.
Fun facts
- Peter Walls and Annette Sohns-Dodd collaborated on the mural.
- The animal images were made on shaped marine plywood panels.
- Walls describes preparing seven panels during winter.
Before you go
- View from the public pedestrian route and leave the trail entrance clear.
- Look for the distinction between animal panels and painted concrete.
- Credit both artists in a shared photograph.
- Choose a separate suitable route if continuing onto the trail.
Capture
- Frame the relationship between the shaped panels and their colored background.
- Follow a wider view with one carefully selected animal detail.
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Bangor’s Kenduskeag Stream Trail Mural combines painted concrete with shaped wildlife panels.
Annette Sohns-Dodd and Peter Walls brought different parts of the collaboration together.
The artwork occupies retaining walls near the downtown stream-trail entrance.
Seven animal panels took shape through winter studio work, Walls recalls.
A fish silhouette and a bird silhouette can lead the eye in different directions.
The streamside setting gives the wildlife subject a local relationship.
Keep the path clear and credit both artists when photographing.
Which creature would draw your first close look?
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