The Choptank Tolomato Legacy Project
Sudlersville Rural Mural
The Sudlersville Rural Mural is a 4’ x 24’ work of art designed and painted by local residents. The project began with public meetings at the Sudlersville Memorial Library in 2023 where community members met to suggest content for the artwork.
Based on these meetings our lead artist created line drawings on four 4’ x 4’ plywood panels featuring a landscape lush with tobacco, wheat, corn, soybeans and vineyards, reflecting local agriculture across four centuries.
The painting also contains 18th century dwellings and commercial buildings of note from the colonial period to the present.
Around the border there are silhouettes of the Hynson family, local tenant farmers, Simon Newcomb, a world renown astronomer who began his career in Sudlersville, local hero Sus Goodhand, WWII P-51 Mustang pilot, Jenny Schmidt, area grain farmer, Lisa Godfrey, local vegetable farmer & Lisa Dwyer, local horticultualist and tree farmer. The border vignettes also feature John M. George and Dr. Joseph Metcalf, champion skeet shooters, Jeff Hopkins, champion archer, Jimmie Foxx, MLB legend and Reggie Satterfield, unofficial town sheriff.
The design also contains Guatemalan folk art iconography - a nod to the local Hispanic community - and West African textile patterning, in acknowledgement of the enslaved people who once toiled in local fields. The painting features Sudlersville Supply grain elevator, the Sudlersville peach cannery, the Sudlersville Bank and the Pennsylvania Railroad station.
Local residents began painting the project at the Sudlersville Library on Saturdays in June 2024. The project will continue through October. Installation will take place on the library grounds in October 2024.
The Choptank Tolomato Legacy Project teaches cultural literacy of the Eastern Shore through the arts. The murals we facilitate are designed and created by residents in the communities where the artwork is displayed. The Maryland State Arts Council Public Art Across Maryland program provides funding which allows us to offer these meaningful arts education programs to residents of rural enclaves of the region.
