A massive mural in Brunswick that sparked debate over the portrayal of the Wabanaki has been completed.

The mural, named “Many Stitches Hold Up the Sky,” adorns the southern side of the Fort Andross Mill Complex and faces the busy Route 1, where thousands of drivers pass each day. It depicts eight diverse people, with some stitching a sun-splashed fabric portrait of the building and the Androscoggin River. It was more than 10 years in the making and relied on $75,000 in donations to Brunswick Public Art, the organization that commissioned the mural.

The work, 40 feet tall and 35 feet wide, is intended to convey three themes: the rising diversity in the Brunswick area, the revitalization of the mill by developer Coleman Burke and “the positive force of people working together,” according to Steve Weems, the Brunswick Public Art treasurer who managed the project.

Hallowell artists Jen Greta Cart and her husband, Chris, completed the mural last week after spending two years on the project. They used an aerial lift to adhere the work’s canvas sections to the wall.

“I did my very best to make a hopeful, inclusive piece of art that was uplifting and that had a message of love and hope,” Jen Greta Cart said. “I gave this my all. It was the biggest project of my life.”

The complex is on the site of the former Fort Andross, which was built in 1688 to repel the Wabanaki from an area they relied on for fishing and hunting.

Writer and artist Mihku Paul of the Wolastoqey, a Wabanaki tribe, said the mural glosses over the fort’s violent history.

“The native people were literally driven out,” Paul said. “It was a boneyard because of the conflicts that took place.”

Weems said the mural was intended to be contemporary and not a solely historic representation.

When the mural neared completion, Paul and others told Brunswick Public Art the mural plans should be changed to better reflect the site’s history. The artists added two Wabanaki setting a canoe in the Androscoggin River in the background.

“We still end up with a picture that does not necessarily educate,” Paul said. “We have to have these difficult conversations, and it’s about time that actual historical events of Brunswick’s growth and becoming a community are included in public art.

“We weren’t asking for a negative, ‘shame on you’ message, but imagine just taking one actual person from Brunswick’s colonial history and one actual person from the Wabanaki history and having that there and have people see that. It could spark a conversation that can lead to those kinds of interactions that create change.”

The mural features a Wabanaki woman climbing a ladder with a roll of thread slung over her shoulder. She and the rest of the characters in the mural are intended to be composite characters, except for Burke, who’s playing a banjo. Burke, who died in 2020, purchased the mill in 1986 and helped transform the four-story building into its current form, featuring more than 100 tenants, from restaurants to nonprofits to businesses. Burke’s company, Waterfront Maine, owns the mill and allowed Brunswick Public Art to install the mural; a representative of the company did not return a message seeking comment.

The building was the site of the former Cabot Mill and the mural’s fabric portrait is meant to recall the mill’s history of producing textiles. Paul pointed to another side of the mill’s history: the mistreatment of French-Canadian workers and the use of child labor.

“(The mural is) not a true picture of Brunswick and it misses the mark in terms of education and substantive content,” Paul said.

Jen Greta Cart said she simply tried to show a group of people working together.

“The world is this big quilt that we’re all making by being decent to each other,” she said. “I wanted to make something beautiful for the people of Brunswick. … You cannot please everyone.”

“Literally this is stitching together a beautiful fabric tapestry, using the kind of fabric once produced in the mill,” Weems said. “Figuratively, it could be just about anything that the mural calls forth for the viewer. We hope that might include cooperative community action to help create a sustainable future. But that is just one possible interpretation.”

Joseph Hall, a Bates College history professor who studies the Wabanaki, said the mural is beautiful and colorful.

“It seeks to represent a certain kind of togetherness any community would strive for, but I think it’s fundamentally flawed in that it seeks to represent some people without actually engaging with them,” he said.

This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Mihku Paul’s first name.

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