The City of Fort Collins will be completing the city’s largest asphalt art installation at the intersection of Canyon Avenue, West Magnolia Street and South Sherwood Street in conjunction with FC Moves and local artist Jess Bean.

The mural, which will be installed Aug. 14-18, also serves to enhance community safety by aiming to slow traffic speeds, shorten pedestrian crossing distances and protect vulnerable pedestrians from vehicles, according to a press release from the City of Fort Collins.

“The idea is that not only are we painting an infrastructure, but we’re also bringing art to the people,” said Anna Kelso, City of Fort Collins active modes specialist. “It’s street beautification, and it’s placemaking so that when our streets look like people belong there, then people drive like they expect to see people on the street. It’s a totally different psychology for how we experience, like, our general environment, but it also changes how people behave behind the wheel.”

The project has been in motion since 2020, Kelso said, inspired by a city repair project in Portland, Oregon. Fort Collins was one of the recipients of the Bloomberg Philanthropies Asphalt Art Initiative grant, a philanthropic fund that gives 25 cities in North America the money to install public artwork that both prioritizes public beautification and enhances road safety.

“The magic of this is we’re coupling it with what they call tactical urbanism,” Kelso said. “We can make safer streets on a shorter time frame with less money than, like, this intersection … where we plan to redesign it with poured concrete. … The design has a natural effect where (it) pinches down traffic, therefore slowing traffic speeds and shortening the distance that pedestrians are crossing the streets.”

The design of the asphalt installation is by local artist Jess Bean and will emphasize bright colors and vibrancy with a design inspired by archival research around the street names.

“Canyon (Avenue) is named because it was a passthrough for trucks coming down from the canyon,” Bean said. “And that is why we’re doing, like, wavy lines — to kind of represent, like, movement or water flow. And then we have Magnolia (Street), but then I was thinking, (and) I was looking into (it and found) that magnolias are not native plants to Fort Collins or Colorado in general.”

Bean said the design is also inspired by the actions of Native Americans who resisted the suppression of American government officials like Frank Sherwood, Sherwood Street’s namesake.

“If you research what Indian agents did, they basically placated local natives and just tried to keep them happy without actually giving them anything at all,” Bean said. “So to kind of reclaim the streets, I went the other route and used a feather that represents Chief Friday, who was a local Arapaho chief here that went to Washington D.C. a couple times to fight for Arapaho rights.”

Eventually, Friday took his tribe to safety up the river in Wyoming. Bean plans to represent this in her art by having magnolia leaves push out the native feathers.

Bean said public murals are statistically proven to increase public morale by up to 40% and can deter crime by up to 90% because of public visibility.

“It slows people down,” Bean said. “Like I said earlier, you know, people just engage with it, slow down and kind of take in the neighborhood a little more. But yeah, I really want to have the locals come out and have a good time and feel like they own a piece of this mural as well. And it’s not it’s not just mine — it’s everybody’s.”

Part of the mural’s goal is to make art more accessible to the people of Fort Collins, both through the creation of the mural and the beautification efforts.

“There’s an effort to bring this institution to the people,” Kelso said. “Because, like, historically, … not everyone feels welcome to come to museums. And so locally here in Fort Collins, the city is very dedicated to our (diversity, equity and inclusion) mission, and part of that is making art more accessible to the people, and so that’s where public art comes in.”

The city is seeking volunteers to help install the mural. No prior public art experience is required.

“I want to see everybody come out and come together, meet new people and be able to tell stories about it,” Bean said. “And tell generations in the future, ‘Yes, I worked on that; I worked on this huge piece, and it was so cool.’ I want to see people that have thoughts about expanding their art careers and feeling safe to expand their art career after working on this.”

Reach Allie Seibel at entertainment@collegian.com or on Twitter @allie_seibel_.