Helping Hands mural work begins this week in downtown La Crosse

Work on a downtown mural begins today in La Crosse.

Artist Landon Sheely is set to start work on his ‘Helping Hands’ mural on the northwest corner of the Main Street parking ramp.

The three story mural of colorful people holding each other up is expected to largely be done by the rest of this week.

It’s not an insignificant step in process of adding more art to the city, says Arts Board chair Doug Weidenbach.

“It’s been in the works on the arts board for months,” Weidenbach said. “We finally got all the logistics ironed out. We’re going to have a great mural downtown. And it’s already sparked more interest across the city.”

And that may be the biggest impact from this mural as it has drawn interest for other similar works in the city.

“I think you can already see it because we’ve had multiple different proposals to the arts board for new murals,” Weidenbach said. “It’s definitely acting as a catalyst for more people to have more art in the city.”

The Lower North side Depot neighborhood, especially, is putting in work to identify several places where more murals could go in public places.

“I think it gets people,” Weidenbach said, “not only interested in their own neighborhoods, but also gets them to come and to experience and to be a part of the place that, maybe without that art, they wouldn’t have actually been a part of.”

Sheely has said his Helping Hands mural is meant to convey a sense of people helping each other.

Cost for the Helping Hands mural was projected to be less than $5,000 and it should largely be finished by the end of the week.