Mural celebrating canal’s widening unveiled in Brockport
Albion native Stacey Kirby created the artwork
Photo courtesy of Stacey Kirby – The Brockport community on Saturday celebrated the installation and unveiling of a new 20- by 8-foot mural highlighting the Brockport community in 1914-1916 when the canal was widened. The mural is on the DPW Building at 38 East Ave.
BROCKPORT – A former nondescript building on East Avenue, the village of Brockport’s DPW garage, now displays a striking painting that highlights one of Brockport’s most ambitious public works projects: the widening the Erie Canal in 1914-1916.
Albion native Stacey Kirby created the mural that is 20 feet wide and 8 feet high. On Saturday, the artwork was dedicated.
Kirby referenced historic photos from the massive project in creating the mural. She incorporated the old technology of moving freight along the canal with mule-drawn boats with the new technology of the day, steam engines that powered the steam shovel in the painting.
She has a worker in the foreground holding a shovel. (Kirby took a photo of a barista at a coffee shop in Rochester as a model for the worker. She usually picks family and friends as her models in the murals.)
Kirby has two murals in Albion inside the Lyceum for the Catholic Church on Main Street.
