It took artist nearly a year to paint
After eight years in the making, an expansive mural depicting 300 years of settlement in St. Charles Parish is nearing completion in an unlikely spot.
Muralist Hans Geist is putting the final touches on the 100-foot-long, 10-foot-high mural, which is on display on the side of Cashio’s Food Villa in Destrehan. The idea for a mural based on the area’s history was first brought up prior to the parish’s bicentennial in 2007.
However, Marilyn Richoux, president of the St. Charles Museum and Historical Society, said the project was delayed due to more pressing issues.
Richoux said the St. Charles Historical Foundation chose Cashio’s Food Villa for the mural because it provided enough space and was very public so the area’s residents could enjoy it on a daily basis.
“We needed a big palette. It is a lot of history, a lot of characters… there was just so much to fit into this space. When we saw [Cashio’s wall] and brought it to the artist to look at, he said this would be a perfect palette. The pallet just lent itself to this representation,” she said. “This wall was perfect to represent what we hoped to present.”
For Geist, 37, the mural is the second largest he has done out of the nearly 200 he has painted during his 20-year career.
“I spent about a year altogether on this from the time we first met until now,” he said.
The mural is made up of 17 panels Geist painted in his Houma studio and then transported to the site where he and assistant Alvin Naquin installed them. The panels tell the story of the area from the earliest French settlers to now and capture important moments along the way, such as the 1811 slave revolt, the Civil War and the oil industry’s effect on the area.
Geist said although 100 feet by 10 feet seems like a lot of space for a mural, he and the St. Charles Historical Foundation had to be very careful about what they presented in the painting and how they went about doing it.
“There was a series of sketches that we did to narrow it down. It was a lot of just changing things around and getting the layout right,” he said. “There was a lot of information and so many things we wanted to put into it, but we had to eliminate things to not keep it too cluttered.”
Richoux said it was a very involved process to decide what should go on the mural.
“We used the timeline from the ‘St. Charles Parish: A Pictorial History’ book. There were several major events, as you can believe over 300 years, so we had to be very selective of which events to represent,” she said.
In addition to the panels that are already bolted to the side of the building, Geist is currently finishing the mural by painting Destrehan High School and the Hale Boggs Bridge directly on the wall.
Geist said the process of putting together the mural from beginning to end has been painstaking, but well worth the work.
“It has been a learning experience for me. I’ve learned a lot about the parish. It has been a fun project and I’ve really enjoyed it,” he said.
Richoux thinks the mural is something the whole parish can celebrate.
“The work is beautiful, there was such planning and care and dedication. It was years we worked on this. We want it to be something people appreciate and fully grasp the significance of the mural,” she said.
Cashio’s Food Villa is located at 13572 River Road in Destrehan.
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