Mural transforms Duvall wall

Originally published Saturday, March 25, 2000

By RACHEL JOY LARRIS
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

In a town like Duvall, where the bookstore refuses to have a telephone, where Main Street really is that and where the one working stoplight was installed not so long ago, a simple wall painted by local students is a matter of civic pride.

Initiated by Duvall's antique merchants who wondered if Cedarcrest High School students couldn't do something with a stark concrete slab on their street -- after all, last year the school's art club painted a mural inside a local pizza parlor, which paid them in pizza -- the project was sponsored by the town's chamber of commerce.

"If we get a nice day we can usually knock a mural out in two weeks," said Bryanne Siggstedt, president of the Cedarcrest High School art club.

But this time rainy weather extended the project, painted after school and on weekends, to almost seven weeks.

Of course, everyone had their own idea of what the mural should look like, said art teacher Brad Skiff. "We were looking for something that would work in the space. We took the mountains from one person, someone came up with a river down the middle, and another suggested the flowers."

When it was completed, the mural transformed the blank wall located at that single stoplight into a beautiful, almost wistful, scene of hills, mountains, rivers and flowers.

It became something of a homage to the views of the former logging town's past with nary a house in sight and an unspoiled landscape, a portrait of Duvall's Rockwellian period during a time that may be ending but is certainly not forgotten.

"There's not much to do here after dark," Siggstedt said. "I moved here three or four years ago. It was quite a cultural shock. If there aren't evening social programs in the local church, most teenagers head to Carnation, Redmond or even farther away to Seattle."

But Siggstedt grew to appreciate the forested beauty and the peace of the little town, as have other newcomers.

With a population of about 4,400, Duvall is located between Carnation and Redmond.

Each year it attracts hundreds of new residents, seemingly drawn to the still-forested areas and homey feel of the community.

The budding population earned Duvall its first street light on Main Street, and now a second will soon be up.

"There's nothing you can do to stop people from moving in, so you might as well make an attractive place for people to sit at the stoplight," Siggstedt said.