Artist Phill Bourque bringing Weir Village mural back to life

TAUNTON – It’s been eight years since local artist John Barradas died at the age of 99.

The Taunton-bred sign shop owner is remembered, in part, for having designed the Taunton Green Christmas display a total of five times from the late 1940s to the late 1980s.

But it was a Weir Village wall mural he painted in 1999 – when Barradas was still a sprightly 82 – on the side of a commercial building at 13 West Water St. that to many Tauntonians became his signature piece.

The “Weir History Comes Alive” mural was intended to depict, in a fanciful and animated fashion, the look of the neighborhood’s commercial and industrial district at the turn of the 20th century.

But time, the elements and a graffiti incident in 2010 involving red spray paint all took its toll on the 30-foot-long public art display.

Enter Phill Bourque. The Los Angeles-based, full-time working artist, who grew up in Taunton, for the past two-plus weeks has been painting a new mural based on Barradas’s original mural sketch.

“It’s pretty ambitious, but I feel pretty good about it now,” Bourque, 32, said.

Bourque says he makes a living working mainly in what’s come to be known as the “horror” genre of art – a contemporary and flamboyant style that incorporates garish, comic book imagery that’s often morbid, surreal or unsettling depending on one’s taste.

“Eighty percent of my work is in the horror community. It’s blowing up (and) it’s keeping money in my pockets,” he said.

Bourque says he travels across the country painting an average of two horror-art jobs per month in people’s homes or businesses. There’s also a North Hollywood coffee shop called Horror Vibes Coffee that is essentially tattooed with his flat-surface, hand brush work.

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The Weir Village assignment is not just the polar opposite in terms of imagery.

It also requires that Bourque hew closely to someone else's work at the expense of his own, unfettered creative impulses. That type of discipline is something new for the bearded bachelor.

“This is the first time I’ve ever done brush stroke to brush stroke,” he said, adding that “I want to honor the guy (Barradas) and give some love back.”

It’s also a chance for him to spend the Christmas season with his parents, Bernard and Debbie Bourque, at their family home in Rehoboth.

New versus old mural versions

Bourque and his father, a retired surgical engineer, prepped the wooden wall by applying three layers of white primer.

“The wall was very chipped and deteriorated,” Bourque said. “It wasn’t silky smooth. We had to chip, sand and prime it.”

The finished product will have a backdrop of blue and pastel tan, which deviates somewhat from the original mural. And the animated depiction of people, buildings and a train will also generally be larger and more pronounced in scale.

But he insists he’s being as faithful as possible to the original Barradas sketch, which has been preserved by the Taunton Art Association. He used a duplication of the drawing that was scanned on to two segments of paper.

“I’m following his sketch,” said Bourque, who added that by the time Barradas painted his wall mural he improvised to some extent and allowed himself to deviate from his own, original sketch.

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Bourque also used as a reference guide a copy of an early 1900s black and white photo of West Water Street.

In order to align the imagery of the sketch within the confines of the horizontal wall space, Bourque created a JPEG file of the original image, which he then loaded into a portable projector on loan from Taunton High School.

“I did it (the first) Saturday night," he said, adding that “It transfers onto the wall pretty nicely.”

He says he’s been using standard acrylic paint purchased from a local Home Depot store.

Encouragement and approval

During his Weir Village assignment, any number of passersby gave thumbs up to Bourque and his mural restoration.

“Looking good, looking good,” two young women said one day, as they walked past on the sidewalk.

“It’s really cool. It brings back the old 1990s,” said Taunton resident Bob Burt, who claims to be a direct descendant of one of a group of 40 families who originally settled in the Silver City.

Former Dighton selectman Patrick Menges, although not a Taunton resident, heartily endorsed Bourque’s efforts.

“That’s outstanding,” Menges said. “It’s going to give a lift. It takes away the feeling of decay.”

Menges said he comes to the Weir every three weeks for a haircut and parks in the municipal lot situated between Pistol Pete’s Barber Shop – the side wall of which serves as a canvas for the mural – and New Weir Pizza.

How he got the job

Bourque said he was hired to provide his artistic services after responding two months ago to a want ad posted on the LinkedIn social media platform.

Jay Pateakos, director of the city’s Office of Economic and Community Development, said he posted the ad.

He did so, he said, after assistant director Jim Howland suggested that it might make sense to restore and reinvent the old Barradas mural, especially since the adjacent, city-owned parking lot had just been repaved.

“We did a call out on LinkedIn, and Phill responded,” said Pateakos, who says he didn’t have much luck when he initially put out feelers to Taunton-area artists.

“They weren’t interested in doing something that wasn’t original,” he said.

Pateakos says the timing was fortuitous. Mayor Shaunna O’Connell recently came out in support of painting colorful mural designs throughout the city – as a means of improving overall attractiveness and boosting economic development opportunities in Taunton.

During a presentation to the city council in October, Pateakos said the cost of the new public art initiative will be covered by the city's federal allotment of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding.

He also at the time noted the positive reaction of residents to two mural installations in the Whittenton neighborhood. Those murals, however, were funded through a MassDevelopment state program.

The Weir Village mural project, he said, is independent of both of those funding sources and is instead being paid out of his departmental budget.

Pateakos also said his office was given permission by Peter Medeiros, owner of Pistol Pete’s Barber Shop, to continue to use his wall for a mural.

Bourque said he normally would charge between $8,000 and $10,000 for a mural of this size requiring at least two weeks of labor but that he agreed to do the job for $5,000.

He said Taunton Public Schools superintendent John Cabral seemed to be pleased with the work he did this past summer – when he was hired to paint large letters on an elevated and curved section of Taunton High School, spelling out the school’s Tigers mascot name along with the name of the city.

“Taunton likes to keep me on my toes,” Bourque said.

He said it was his cousin Matt Bourque, who teaches graphic arts design at the high school, who let him know about the LinkedIn ad.

Matthew Bourque garnered his share of attention in 2019 for creating a large and elaborate mural design in the lobby of Taunton High’s Joseph Rabouin Field House.

Taunton roots and personal development

Phill Bourque was a student at Taunton High School but eventually graduated in 2009 from Dighton-Rehoboth Regional High School after his parents moved to Rehoboth. He has no siblings.

He earned a bachelor of arts degree from University of Massachusetts Dartmouth majoring in illustration and multimedia arts, a discipline that includes oil and acrylic painting and sculpture.

Bourque said he was 18 when he initially got his feet wet, in terms of creating designs, by doing a short stint at the Pleasure In Pain tattoo shop in Taunton.

“I learned how to make stencils and did a couple tattoos,” he said.

After college, Bourque became adept at using chalk to create sandwich boards for Brick Art Materials in Providence where he worked in sales. His first large mural, he said, was one that he made for Chris Cerce’s custom hot rod shop in Taunton.

He also began making trips to the West Coast and in 2013 moved to Los Angeles with $4,000.

“I kind of lied to my parents and said I had a job out there,” Bourque said.

In Los Angeles he took part for a while in an after-school program teaching kids in grades six through eight in a section of the city then known as South Central and now simply called South LA.

Bourque’s first real exposure as an up and coming artist came when he began working at a popular, local coffee shop where he was allowed to showcase and sell his art on a commission basis.

“I did 10 big chalk murals for them. It created a buzz. That’s when I became a full-time muralist,” he said.

Barradas legacy endures

Bourque is hopeful that the Weir Village mural will not need any major renovations for at least eight to 10 years. He plans to ask the city if someone can apply a varnish finish to protect and prolong its life.

After John Barradas completed his outdoor mural in 1999, a bronze plaque commemorating the achievement was attached to a corner of the wooden wall.

Three sponsors are listed on the plaque. These include the former Weir Corporation non-profit agency; the late Nancy Benoit, who volunteered and advocated on behalf of Weir Corp.; and the late, local historian and city councilor Charles Crowley, who later became mayor of Taunton.

Bourque has been protecting the plaque with a plastic covering until he has completely finished his work.

In the ensuing years there shouldn’t be confusion as to who initially created the Weir Village mural and who subsequently restored it to the best of his abilities.

“I’ll sign both names,” Bourque said.

This article originally appeared on The Enterprise: Weir Village mural, created by Taunton's John Barradas gets new life