There Is a Sun Painted on Main Avenue Now, and It Is There to Slow You Down

A four-season mural now covers the intersection at Main and Mill, painted by a Ridgefield artist in honor of a grandmother whose fingerprints are already all over this town.

If you drove through downtown in the last two weeks and found yourself easing off the gas at Main and Mill for no reason you could immediately name, congratulations: the mural is working. The City of Ridgefield dedicated a new street mural at that intersection on Saturday, August 1, and it is not decoration. It is a traffic-calming project that happens to be beautiful, which is the best kind of infrastructure.

The intersection sits right next to the Ridgefield Community Library and Davis Park, which is to say it is one of the most kid-dense corners in town. Mayor Matt Cole led the dedication. Councilmember Meghan Hamilton was there. So were the artist and the volunteers who spent the week before on their knees in the road with paint.

What is actually painted down there

A big yellow-and-orange sun, ringed by tree branches that move through all four seasons. Autumn leaves give way to winter snowflakes, then spring blossoms, then summer green. There is a bird's nest tucked in for new life, which, if you have watched this town's population chart lately, is on the nose in the best way.

It reads differently depending on where you are standing. From the sidewalk you see the seasons. From a car, slowing, you mostly see the sun and the fact that this is clearly not just asphalt anymore.

The artist, and the grandmother

The mural was designed and painted by local artist Olivia Bonebrake, who donated her time and her talent to the project. She made it in honor of her grandmother, Allene Wodaege.

If that name is new to you, it should not be. Wodaege helped establish the Ridgefield Community Center. She founded the Friends of the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge. She played a key role in creating Overlook Park. Three of the places people point to when they explain why they moved here, and she had a hand in all of them.

The project itself came out of a shared idea between the city and the Ridgefield Art Association that this particular intersection wanted a mural. It became real when the city connected with Bonebrake.

The people on their knees in the road

Bonebrake did not do it alone. Volunteers from the Ridgefield Art Association painted alongside her during the week leading up to the dedication, in August, on pavement, which anyone who has touched a Ridgefield sidewalk in summer can tell you is a commitment.

Why paint an intersection instead of, say, a sign

Because signs get ignored and paint does not. Street murals have been shown to help slow vehicle speeds and sharpen driver attention in places where a lot of people are walking, which is the entire pitch here. A driver processing an unexpected pattern under the tires lifts off the accelerator without being told to.

Put that next to a library, a park and a downtown that is getting busier every year, and the math is pretty simple. The city gets a safer corner. The town gets a piece of art. Nobody had to install anything ugly.

Questions you are probably about to ask

Can I walk on it?

Yes, when the crosswalk says so. It is street paint, not a gallery floor.

Will it survive a Ridgefield winter?

Street murals wear with traffic and weather, and most communities plan on periodic touch-ups. Watch the city and the Ridgefield Art Association for repaint days, which are usually the volunteer opportunity that nobody knows about until it is over.

How do I get involved in the next one?

The Ridgefield Art Association is the front door. This mural existed because a group of people said yes to a week of painting in the heat.

Is this the same as the Main Avenue wall mural?

Different project. That one is on the north side of 112 N Main Avenue and features the dragon boats. This one is on the ground.

The larger point

Ridgefield adds things constantly. New parks, new fire stations, new roundabouts, new neighborhoods, an entire community and recreation center on the way. Most of it is necessary and some of it is genuinely exciting, but very little of it is personal.

This one is personal. A granddaughter painted a sun into the middle of a street for a grandmother who spent her life building the places the rest of us take for granted. Go look at it before the leaves actually turn and the painted ones start feeling redundant.