In the years after it was built to allow the Erie Canalway Trail to pass under some railroad tracks, the concrete tunnel in Rotterdam Junction has been dark, monotone and often covered in graffiti.
That’s no longer the case.
Since the start of the month, three siblings have been spending their afternoons painting both sides of the more-than-100-foot tunnel. The tunnel walls are now adorned with woodpeckers, frogs, herons, deer and other animals, as do human cyclists and skaters.
“The idea was kind of like, we have the people on the wings going through the tunnel, and then they’re entering this meadow, and then there’s a pond,” Quill Harrison, one of the artists, said. “It's like how you’re seeing all the nature come together as you travel on the trail.”
Quill Harrison and their siblings Jade Warrick and Zoe Harrison have spent much of the past month in and out of that tunnel, painting. Their sister Shalom Harrison helped design the mural.
The siblings all took up painting separately. They worked independently until Warrick suggested they all join forces.
“I was like, ‘Well, why are we just not all doing it together? Let’s do a really cool family-based project,’” Warrick said.
The mural is part of a 2019 initiative by Cycle Schenectady and CREATE Community Studios to bring art to trails in the Mohawk and Hudson valleys. The mural was funded by more than $32,000 in grants from the State Canal Corporation, the Schenectady County Metroplex Development Authority and Schenectady County.
The Warrick and Harrison siblings were selected from more than 100 artists who applied from North America, Europe and Australia. The groups narrowed it down to five finalists (including the siblings) and put their designs to the public before selecting a finalist.
Since they’ve started painting at the beginning of July, the siblings have gotten to know some of the trail users passing by. Warrick says members of the public have asked them questions, pointed out the animals to their children, donated food and thanked them for making the tunnel feel brighter and safer.
“I think we all enjoy talking to the people and just going through this experience together,” Warrick said. “It’s like, yeah, we’re artists and we’re painting this, but we’re really experiencing this with every single person that’s going through."
The only person who hasn’t seemed to appreciate the new mural is Mother Nature. When it rains, water soaks into the tunnel and drips down the walls. Zoe Harrison says the siblings discovered that would be an issue on their first day of painting.
“It had rained I think the day before or earlier in the day, so all the walls were getting wet, and I had painted on the first layer of blue – everything just started dripping down the walls,” Zoe Harrison said. “It was terrible, but we bounced back.”
Not long after the rain, a heat wave hit, sending temperatures in Rotterdam into the high 80s and low 90s. The heat got so bad, the siblings felt a bit relieved when Canadian wildfire smoke blanketed the region.
“The week before that it was just heat, heat, heat, heat. So it was nice having well, nice in quotations because the air quality was terrible, but it was nice and cool,” Zoe Harrison said. “Pros and cons.”
The siblings expect to finish their mural by the end of the month.
