Seraphina, the sulcata tortoise from the Hattiesburg Zoo, visited Moore’s Bike Shop for the ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday afternoon of the store’s new mural of animals that live across the street. Store owner James Moore looked down.
“I am completely upstaged by a turtle,” he said to a small group of city officials, animal wranglers, interested citizens and spirited children who came to cut the ribbon. “I am really proud to partner with Avenues Alliance, the Zoo and Visit Hattiesburg on this project. It has been a pleasure working with Heidi Pitre.”
The mural on the store’s southern and eastern sides is Pitre’s second zoo-themed mural after one on the west side of the Grove Transit building on Hardy Street. Included in the first mural design, which features lines radiating from the center, are a mandala and a sloth, jaguar, owl and flamingo drawn from photographs.
Moore explained to the ribbon-cutting crowd that is zoo is totally responsible for the existence of Moore’s Bike Shop.
“In 1989 just before we hit bankruptcy, we decided to leave Petal and come on over to Hattiesburg,” he said. “We could not afford a location on a thoroughfare, so we found a little spot down at the end of Hutchinson Avenue. I thought, ‘That’s really brilliant because everybody will know where the high school is when we give directions.’ The phone began to ring, and I said, ‘Yeah, we’re right by the high school. Hattiesburg High School. Well, do you know where Deposit Guaranty is on Hutchinson? Do you know where the zoo is? Oh, yes.’ Since then, directions always started with the zoo because everyone knew where the zoo was.”
However, things started to pick up at the bicycle shop.
“Ten years later, when the Longleaf Trace opened and we needed to expand, I had one objective: Get as close to the zoo as possible,” Moore said. “That’s why we’re here. I was the only bicycle dealer in America at that time who could look out my office window and see zebras and ostriches.”
Moore said the first mural made an impression on him.
“When I saw Heidi working on the other mural a block over, I really liked her style, stopped and spoke to her and started exploring the possibility of doing business,” he said. “Earlier this week when Heidi started, I walked up and looked at it. She looked dismayed. I said, ‘Is everything OK?’ She said, ‘It just looks so elementary.’”
The murals at Moore’s Bike Shop depict a giraffe and a sloth riding bicycles with colored streamers flowing out of the handlebars. Near the streamers are silhouettes of animals in the streamer colors that show zoo animals.
Moore, who had been a Petal alderman, told Pitre the story of how he used his funds to commission murals around the city.
“The mural that got the most conversation was the one on the side of the drugstore where fifth-graders drew colorful insects and animals,” he said. “The teacher merged them into one format and over five Saturdays, each student painted in their own insect or animal. The most common complaint to that mural was ‘It looked like something a bunch of fifth-graders did.’ I thought, ‘Well, mission accomplished.’”
Moore said the elementary aspect of the animals appeals to him.
“Picasso said, ‘Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain that artist once they grow up,’” he said. “Public art, especially art like this, radiates pure joy and asks nothing from the viewer except to recall the innocence of childhood. It gives me a reason to smile and I smile every time I come to work, every time I pass by it, every time I go home and hope the city will do that as well.”
