The Hendo Bee Line & Life Line Sidewalk Murals by Elizabeth Queen (Corner of 3rd Ave E & Main St to Corner of 7th Ave E & Maple St)

This episode features two sidewalk murals, The Hendo Bee Line and the Hendo Life Line. The Life Line mural begins at the corner of 3rd Ave East and Main Street. It follows the sidewalk east to King Street, then turns north running on the west side of King until it reaches 4th Ave. East. At that corner, it crosses over to the east side of King and continues to proceed north to 5th Ave East. Crossing to the north side of 5th Ave., it turns east again and continues one block to Grove Street. Across Grove, another sidewalk mural begins called the Bear or Mountain Crossing mural. That mural extends along 5th Ave East from Grove to N. Pine St. where another sidewalk mural is located. The HENDO sign language mural spans the sidewalk from N. Pine to Maple St. This mural spells out the nickname of Hendersonville, “Hendo” in both letters and American Sign Language. Both the Bear Crossing mural and the Hendo mural were created and painted by Diamond Cash and will be featured in another episode. Just past the Hendo mural, at the northeast corner of 5th Ave East and Maple Street, the Hendo Bee Line mural begins.

It runs north between Maple Street and the old Southern Railway tracks until it reaches the historic Hendersonville train depot in the heart of the revitalized 7th Avenue District

Elizabeth Queen, the creator of both the Bee Line and the Life Line murals, will tell us about them and guide us on the tour of them. She is an artist who is passionate about using art as a communal activity with the goal of bringing people from all walks of life to collaborate on public art projects not only to beautify the local community but to inspire community service. The Bee Line mural was commissioned first by the city of Hendersonville to fulfill a grant they received from the AARP for just such communal art projects. Hundreds of people came out to help Elizabeth paint the mural. The project was such a success that those citizens that worked on it asked when they could do another one. Because of that Elizabeth got the idea to create another mural connecting the main downtown area to the Bee Line mural and the 7th Avenue Historic District.

Elizabeth resides in Hendersonville, NC and has led several art projects in various media that accomplished this community goal. She compares her directing of those projects to “choreography” which is a lovely way to think of getting people to work together to create something beautiful.

Listen now as she tells us how the projects got started and the communal spirit that was built as they were created and completed.