A Push for Public Art in Saugus

By Gabriella Galbadis

As co-chair of the Saugus Cultural Council, Victoria “Tori” Darnell is pushing to introduce public art in Saugus, even though the town’s zoning bylaws prevent it. Others on the council, joined by local business owners and Saugus residents, say public art would be a welcome addition to the town’s landscape, but the Saugus zoning bylaws place limitations on signage, specifically on size, color, location and illumination.

“I want to create policy. I don’t want to just change the bylaw, because I understand what the bylaw serves,’’ Darnell said in a recent interview. “It’s just that signage and art are not necessarily the same thing.”

Darnell’s efforts for a new public art policy have faced several roadblocks. While Saugus is a close-knit community, she said residents whose families have not lived in Saugus for generations have had a harder time getting their voices heard, particularly around public art.

They often get the run around, she added. For instance, when she previously expressed her public art ideas to precinct members, they directed her to the town manager and the Select Board. “When I go down those avenues, it’s just crickets,” Darnell said.

Darnell said she first noticed the town was void of public art after moving to Saugus in 2021. While walking through Saugus, she said, her son, who was five at the time, asked, “Where’s the art?”

Darnell said her previous communities, Revere and Boston, are filled with public art in the parks, public squares and various sites in neighborhoods. “I sort of took it for granted,” she said. “It takes … a child’s mind to recognize that something is missing and how important it is.”

Joseph “Dennis” Gould, the council’s other co-chair, who backs Darnell’s efforts, said art has a rightful place in town. “If you look at Lynn, where they’ve done murals,’’ Gould said, “it’s a great thing.”

Darnell also noted that Lynn has its own mural program and arts commissioner. “They’re in it,” she said. “They made an investment.”

But getting public art in Saugus has been challenging.

Both Gould and Darnell recalled the pushback that a Saugus businessman faced in 2019 after he had a mural erected on Cap World Truck Accessories & Trailers that pays homage to Route 1. The mural shows the iconic restaurants and businesses that line the major thoroughfare. At one point, town officials wanted him to cover the mural. At another point, they pressed him to take it down, but eventually they relented.

“We saw it as a mural. They saw it as a sign,” said Cap World manager Andrew Scott, who said the mural created a lot of problems in town and for the company.

The town’s zoning bylaws do not make a distinction between signage and murals. At the 2022 Town Meeting, Joseph Vecchione, who was on the town’s planning board, presented an article that if passed would separate the two and therefore allow murals. When precinct members voted on the matter, it was an overwhelming no.

“They were going to make him take it down because it was art,” Gould said about the Cap World mural. “It was crazy, so I got involved then.”

The mural got to stay. Scott said the mural has finally been classified as a nonconforming sign that was “grandfathered” in.

Since then, other Route 1 businesses have approached Darnell seeking artists to do murals for them, she said, but she has had to express to them that the town must approve it first before they invest their time and money. She added that she recognizes that there is an existing appetite for public art, but not enough action towards making change anymore.

She said she plans to resurrect the issue of public art at the annual Town Meeting in May. She wants to talk with Town Meeting members who have shown support for public art and address the lack of responses she and others have been receiving on this issue.

Residents in surrounding communities have also offered to help the public art effort in Saugus. “Art should be everywhere,” said Jason Sheridan DeMasi, a Revere artist who works at Kane’s Donuts in Saugus.

Darnell is conceiving community art workshops that highlight public art, and she is seeking to create a space for dialogue so people can discover what art could do for Saugus.

“People recognize the strength art has for the community,” Darnell said. “It’s just getting people to try and look at it from a different perspective. Because to me, I see art as an economic booster.”

  Gabriella Galbadis is a student journalist in the Boston University Newsroom program. She is a student in Meghan Irons’ Reporting in Depth class. This story is part of a partnership between The Saugus Advocate and the Boston University Department of Journalism’s Newsroom program.