Muralist unveils new piece in Carrboro

Michael Brown, an established Chapel Hill muralist, brought the coffee-growing fields of Central America, South America and beyond to the town of Carrboro with his latest mural on Roberson Street.

The mural, painted on the side of a shed adjacent to the Carrboro Coffee Roasters and Open Eye Cafe’s shared building, depicts a field of coffee plants with white flowers sharing a branch with crimson coffee cherries and green leaves that reflect the sun in a clear blue sky.

Scott Conary, owner of both establishments, travels to coffee fields all over the world, including ones in Central America, South America, Rwanda and the Philippines, to find the coffee that he collects for his customers.

“I wanted to find a way to transport people to the places that we go to find the coffee,” he said.

Conary turned to Brown for assistance in depicting this process, and Brown immediately agreed to paint the mural.

“I’ve always wanted to be in Carrboro, but no one ever asked,” Brown said.

“So when Scott called me up and said, ‘I’d like you, and I want you because you’re the best,’ immediately I was excited and wanted to do it.”

Brown, who is from Chapel Hill, graduated from UNC with a degree in studio art in 1977.

He used photos Conary had taken in various coffee fields as guides for the mural.

“It’s sort of an amalgam of many of the coffee-growing countries that we visit, purposefully so that you can see the difference in the way the fields are and the way the coffee is grown,” Conary said.

Josh Kimbrough, a barista at Open Eye Cafe and a roastery trainer at Carrboro Coffee Roasters, said that because the coffee has to travel so far to Carrboro, it’s easy to miss an association between a finished cup of coffee and where it came from.

“There is a whole journey from seed to cup that happens, but since we don’t live in a coffee-growing area, we’re not confronted with a coffee plant, or a coffee cherry, or a coffee blossom,” he said.

“The mural has all of those things, and in a way, it sort of brings that to Carrboro.”

Brown said he began painting the mural in late November after six months of planning, but the cooperative weather allowed him to complete the mural in just eight days.

Now that the mural is finished, it seems to have been a win for both the roastery and cafe.

“We are not only sharing our experiences — and really everyone’s experiences because it’s telling them where their coffee comes from — but we’re also beautifying their walk to work, or their bike to work, or their bike to class,” Conary said.

“At the very least, I hope it can make them smile when they see it.”

arts@dailytarheel.com