On the street-facing side of Iowa River Power restaurant in Coralville stretches an enormous black-and-white mural of two men showing off the impressively large catfish they caught fishing.
The mural was created from an actual photo of the fishing buddies — Clark McGinnis and Ezekiel Clark, Jr. — taken in the 1920s on a concrete ledge that was likely part of the Iowa River Electric Light and Power Company near the Coralville mill dam and catwalk. A cutout of the image was applied to the side of the restaurant's brick exterior using a method called "wheatpasting" — images printed onto large rolls of paper and then "glued" onto walls using an adhesive made of flour, sugar and water.
"It's like giant paper mache," explained Iowa wheat paster Isaac Campbell. The artist has collaborated with the Coralville Public Library to display dozens of similar historic images from the library's photo archive around the city in celebration of Coralville's 150th anniversary. The biggest mural is pasted on the side of Randy’s Flooring and depicts ice harvesting along the Iowa River. An image of the historic Bluetop Motel was installed on Chong's Supermarket. There's one at the Rec Center, at West Music and the community food pantry.
Campbell, from Ottumwa, studied wheatpasting under French artist JR while on a Fulbright scholarship. For the last six years, he's worked with digital image archives to bring the art form to communities across Iowa and beyond. In the state, he's pasted images from the digital archive Fortepan Iowa in Cedar Falls and added wheat pastes along the RAGBRAI route in 2021.
Advocacy has also been a driving force behind Campbell's projects. In 2022, he pasted larger-than-life photos in Washington, D.C. of 18 Americans who have been wrongfully detained or held hostage as part of the Bring Our Families Home campaign. A second mural was unveiled on July 4 in Houston, Texas.
The images are temporary, lasting an average of three to six months before fading away, but Campbell has seen some last up to two years. Volunteers help roll the glue and paste each image on the sides of buildings, walls and in Coralville's case — on six garage doors along the city's historic 8th Avenue.
Campbell says the community aspect of the project is just as important as the wheat pastes themselves.
"Encountering the art is really powerful, but to me what's even more powerful is the act of bringing people together for an idea or a cause ... and showing in solidarity their efforts together to not just say something but create something that says something," he said.
For RAGBRAI's 50th anniversary this year, Campbell plans to paste murals for each overnight town and some other communities along the route. Each city has contributed a bicycle photo and residents will learn about the art of wheatpasting as they assist Campbell with the murals to greet the event's thousands of visitors.
In addition to pasting historic photos for the anniversary, Coralville is also participating in the global Inside Out project launched by JR, which aims to teach communities around the world to wheat paste while amplifying messages through art.
"[Wheatpasting] really has its roots in allowing the public to have a voice, and we're just taking that and amplifying that with specific causes that are very strategic," Campbell said.
Coralville's message ties back to the public library's digital archive. While the archive has plenty of photos of the past, the library wants to spread awareness in order to keep adding to it, including photos of the city's current population.
"We want more stories of Coralville, want it to be as inclusive as possible and show what Coralville is all about," said Ellen Alexander, the library's assistant director. "Sometimes it’s hard to communicate that present day is just as important as past."
And while children in the rapidly diversifying city may not see themselves reflected in Coralville's history, the city wants to spread the message that they make up Coralville's "bright future," a message promoted during their sesquicentennial. Campbell photographed 137 elementary and junior high students that were pasted in June outside three different school buildings. Some participants and their families helped paste the images.
"Every student got to express themselves how they wanted to be seen or how they see themselves, and when you see them as a collective and you see them as what's inside these schools," Campbell said. "It's beautiful."
