Mural Unveiling at Riverside Ru-Inn

ST. ANTHONY –- The Riverside Ru-Inn hotel is viewed by some as a treasured historical building, and by others as an attractive nuisance. To help preserve the building and the history it holds owner Kenny Matthews and local artists have made some improvements.

“We are doing the mural so that we can help the building owner Kenny Matthews be able to keep the building from being torn down. He’s trying to keep the historic building that we have downtown in place,” Art Lab Executive Directory Kara Hidalgo said.

The Ru-Inn has been a vacant hotel for years, but has been repurposed as a city art feature. To add more value to the building Matthews partnered with local artists to design wooden murals. The murals will be added to the north side of the building instead of new windows.

“Windows as it turns out are really expensive so they’re using the murals to replace some of the windows,” Art Lab volunteer Mandy Eastwood said. “They’re huge wooden panels and they’re massive.”

On Friday, phase one of the three-part mural project will be unveiled. The first phase consists of three large eight-foot tall murals. In phases two, additional murals will replace four, five-foot tall boarded window spaces. The murals will take up a total of seven permanently boarded up windows at the north side of the Ru-Inn.

“With the help of Idaho Art Lab volunteers, Daniel Hidalgo the main artist and Kenny Matthews the building owner, we’ve been able to get it to come together. The mural will go on the north side and the rest of the building is all Kenny Matthews work,” Hidalgo said.

The theme for the mural is a time representation of the 1920’s. It will be like peering into the lobby and grand room, which the hotel once had. The art will focus on fashions and poses of people of that time period.

“They decided they wanted to do something retro, something old,” Art Lab Office Manager Desiree Chesebro-Moeller said. “Things were a little more prim and proper shall we say? Men and women dressed when they went to town.”

Chesebro-Moeller said she grew up in St. Anthony and thinks citizens and those who pass through town will be excited about new art work.

“People in the community, they’re going to take pride in this, because it’s local artists that are doing this,” She said.

Funds for the unveiling were provided by a Public Arts and Cultural Facility grant from the Idaho Commission on the Arts as well as the National Endowment on the Arts. The public is invited to attended the unveiling on Friday July 22 at 9 a.m. on at the Ru-Inn.

“I’m pleased with what Idaho Art Lab has put together. It’s definitely going to be an improvement on the building and also to the community,” Matthews said.

In the final phase of the project are the doors of the north entrance, which is hoped to be completed by next summer.

“Hopefully the rest of us understand that these creative industries and civic projects give a town meaning, it gives it an identity,” Hidalgo said.