Ride of the Valkyries

Documentary subject: David Blodgett

David Blodgett is an artist, and South Bend, Indiana, is his canvas. He’s a muralist. He paints on the sides of buildings and inside on their walls. Drive a mile in any direction in the area, and you will see one of his murals. But just how he became to be the South Bend’s resident muralist was a bit of an accident.

Blodgett chose to study art; that much was on purpose. It would have been hard not to. Both of his parents were artists—at 94 years old, his mother still is. He studied under the legendary Harold Zisla, the founding director of IU South Bend’s art department. He certainly intended to do that too. But murals, he just sort of fell into.

Two years into a job as the Johnson County, North Carolina, resident artist—he swears that use to be a real job title—Blodgett thought he had better do something.

“Nobody gave a freaking rat’s ass that I was there, that I was an artist,” Blodgett said. “So, consequently, we did nothing. But all of this money kept flowing from the state, so we started to get nervous.”

Blodgett and his wife, also a resident artist, found a blank wall in downtown Johnson and got to work on a mural depicting that town’s history. The rest, as they say, is history.

Blodgett is full of anecdotes, colorfully related and humorous. I’ve interviewed him in the past and have always enjoyed it. I am sure any audience would get a kick out of the story of how he became a muralist.

For Blodgett, you just have to point him in the right direction and he takes off with a story. So here are some questions—or more likely suggested topics—that I will offer during the interview:

1. What is a mural?

2. What do people like about murals?

3. How did you become a muralist?

4. What is art?

5. What was it like to study art in the 1970s?

6. Where are you from originally?

7. How were you affected by growing up around artists?

8. How many murals have you painted in South Bend?

9. What’s your favorite mural in the area that we could get footage of?

10. What do you want your legacy to be?