Bruce Marsh’s Riverwall pays homage to the Hillsborough

Bruce Marsh, Riverwall (detail). Photo by Megan Voeller.

Downtown Tampa's Riverwalk gained a public art cornerstone recently with the installation of Bruce Marsh's Riverwall— a 40-foot long mural composed of photographic images of the Hillsborough River. Fired into porcelain enamel on steel plates, the images show the river— a 54-mile long waterway integral to the region's ecological health— in a variety of incarnations, from a forking artery seen from above to a forested stomping ground for boaters.

Marsh, who taught art at the University of South Florida from 1969 to 2003, is well known in the region and beyond as an outstanding landscape painter. Though the Riverwall relies mainly on photographic depictions of the river, some of his paintings appear as pictures among the 550 featured images (each 8-inches by 9-1/2-inches). From afar, the grid forms a purposely enigmatic, river-like shape based on a photograph of floating water lilies.

“The whole idea [was to make] something that would offer a visual hook… that would entice and draw people… and function as a gathering point,” Marsh says.

This article appears in Jul 1-7, 2009.