WORCESTER – While you were trying your best to survive Kelley Square recently, you may have noticed a new addition to the building that houses Hotel Vernon.
The building’s wall that used to feature a ship mural, highlighting the Worcester bar’s ship room, is now covered with cartoon three-deckers and scenes from the city.
A gray and blue three-decker on the side of the building facing the rotary has an arm pointing around the corner, subtly hinting to passersby that there’s something on the back of the building.
The back is covered in even more colorful three-deckers with arms and legs in different poses, Worcester hills, a mini version of the Hotel Vernon building, a train and a sign welcoming people to Kelley Square.
Artist Eamon Gillen, 40, painted the original mural 14 years ago and said with the wear and tear it had gone through, it was time for it to go. With funding from the Worcester Arts Council, Gillen was able to start work on his new mural in mid-August. Gillen’s friend, Gerald Bellmore, helped him with the lettering on the new mural.
Gillen finished most of the mural on Monday, but said there’s still a few minor touches he’d like to add.
The artist has made a name for himself by anthropomorphizing three-deckers in his pieces. In addition to painting murals, he paints watercolors and tattoos out of Crown of Thorns Tattoo Shop on Grafton Street.
“I grew up in three-deckers all around the city and lived on Vernon Hill three different times,” Gillen told the Worcester Guardian Tuesday.
The idea to add arms and legs to the iconic Worcester structures came out of his love for old school cartoons where arms and legs would be added to inanimate objects like a toaster.
“It’s just so common, and trying to figure out ways to kind of humanize something that doesn’t normally move, it’s just something that I’ve always been drawn to since I was a kid, and kids still love it,” Gillen said.
Gillen, a father of three, said he paints more for kids than adults because kids are still open and free and if you mess something up, they’ll tell you. Three-deckers represent home and the city he keeps coming back to after moving to other parts of the country.
While Gillen has been painting the mural over the past few months, neighbors have noticed it and told him it’s cool to see a mural with houses that look like the ones they live in.
Another neighbor who runs by Hotel Vernon was so taken by the design that he tracked Gillen down and asked him to tattoo one of the cartoon houses on him in a running pose.
Gillen said he’s also gotten other ideas for tattoos while he has been working on the murals and his tattoos in turn have also inspired parts of his murals.
“It’s nice to work in two different mediums for that reason,” Gillen said.
Parts of the mural represent sections of the city where there are hills and trees and the three decker houses almost appear as if they’re stacked on top of each other.
The mural is also filled with little homages to his friends, including a train car with a friend’s name and an imagining of the Blackstone Canal, which Hotel
Vernon’s owner Bob Largess is “obsessed with freeing,” according to Gillen.
When people see the mural, Gillen said he hopes they realize it’s something they can do, too, with hard work.
“I like the idea of showing it can be done…anybody can do it; I’m not special,” Gillen said.
He was able to get to this stage in his career, he said, simply because for a while all he would do is draw.
While he said anyone can do it, he has had to work hard to get opportunities like painting a mural the size of the mural on Hotel Vernon.
“It’s an accumulation of a lot of work over a long time…you don’t get discovered…it’s just work, it’s a grind,” Gillen said.
Gillen’s murals can be seen across Central Massachusetts. Gillen painted the frog mural on the Binienda Beach Bathhouse at Coes Pond and the East to West Trail Mural at Beaver Brook Park as part of Park Spirit of Worcester Inc.’s efforts to create a 14-mile cross-city hiking experience.
Kiernan Dunlop is an award-winning journalist who has spent the past five years reporting in Worcester, New Bedford and Antigua and Barbuda. She’s been published in Bloomberg, USA Today, Canary Media, MassLive, and the New Bedford Standard Times, among other outlets. She can be contacted at kdunlop@theworcesterguardian.org.
