Murals going up to help beautify Stockyards Expressway area

By Jazmine Knight

If you’re driving on Stockyards Expressway, you might notice a big change overhead.

Albaugh LLC and painter Sam Welty joined forces to create a mural on a bridge that overlooks the expressway.

The southbound view is dedicated to Albaugh, featuring a cornfield at all different stages of growth and local farmers caring for the crops. The northbound view highlights notable historical moments as well as bold lettering reading “Saint Joseph.”

Sam Welty and Albaugh started collaborating over 18 months ago. Albaugh took notice of Welty’s work with his Downtown murals of the Civil War and Westward Expansion. From there, the partnership took action.

“They had an idea of the gift that they wanted to give to the city for their presence here and everything that they do and everything that the city has done for them,” Welty said.

Since the project is so large and over a major expressway, they knew closing the roads would cause an uproar among the people who frequently travel the route. Consequently, Welty painted the mural in sections. Each panel, 5 feet wide and 10 feet tall and weighing about 200 pounds, was placed on a giant easel at his home in Virginia. Once six or seven panels are complete, they’re loaded onto a truck and shipped to St. Joseph. This project utilized 32 panels on each side, taking Welty months to complete.

“This happened last October and they’ve been sitting in storage for several months until it’s time for the installation,” he said.

Despite the long painting process, Welty is excited to see his project come together.

“I haven’t seen it all,” Welty said. “I mean, I’ve seen each part, but this will be the first time I’ve seen it in its totality and I’m really looking forward to it,” he said.

Albaugh and Welty are still in the process of installing the mural, which is projected to be complete right before Memorial Day. Welty said this installation process is a bit different than what he’s used to.

“I am used to being up on the lift. It is a special experience to have the 18-wheelers going by, all the noise, the interesting smells of the stockyards area,” Welty said.

Since Albaugh is in charge of actually hanging the panels, Welty goes back through each panel and paints over each bolt that was used to help them blend in.

“Each one of these panels has 25 bolts through it, and you can see the channels for reinforcement,” Welty said. “It’s a sheet of plexiglass that I painted on, so it’ll be weatherproof, but also that will adhere to a sheet of aluminum to give it even more strength.”

For materials, it’s hard to put an exact number on the amount of brushes or colors used. Welty starts with about 30 initial colors and then creates different blends and saturations to construct the perfect paint that he needs.

“You think, well, the sky wouldn’t be just two colors, it fades back and forth. So how many shades of gray are there? You’ve got here, there and everywhere in between. So there are hundreds of colors in there,” Welty said.

As far as Welty’s connection to St. Joseph, he says he loves the city. He was originally brought out by mutual friends to paint the Downtown murals and soon came to love the city.

“I fell in love with the area, and ever since then I’ve been looking for any excuse I have to come back,” he said. “So any time I get the opportunity to work and paint another mural, another piece of St. Joseph history, I will jump on it.”

By far his favorite part of creating this mural was working with the people of Albaugh LLC.

“They’ve got a lot of bigger things on their agenda,” Welty said. “And the fact that they wanted to do something artistic, that they wanted to give a gift to the community. Sometimes you don’t expect that from big corporations, but Albaugh’s got a lot of heart.”