Artist Michael Pilato returns home to Centre County to unveil his next mural — in Bellefonte

He’s not far removed from living on a boat for a year in the Gulf Coast. He’s lived in homeless shelters “to get that experience.” And he jokes these days about feeling like Quasimodo since he’s an artist in residence at a Manhattan church built shortly after the Civil War.

Maybe that’s why nationally-recognized muralist Michael Pilato, 55, felt a little homesick over the winter for Happy Valley.

Pilato, who now splits his time between New York and State College, bumped into a longtime friend outside Chumley’s around Christmastime. Pilato mentioned, off-hand, about wanting to eventually paint a mural in Bellefonte — and his friend Duane Reese, owner of Bellefonte’s The Waffle Shop, quipped back, “Well, you know, I got a wall for you.”

Eight months later — after a lot of sweat, paint and historical research — Pilato and Reese are set to unveil “Inspiration Bellefonte,” a 30-foot by 9.5-foot mural, on the side of Reese’s restaurant facing Perry Lane. The mural celebrating local history will be revealed by 9 a.m. Friday, and Pilato will be on-hand both then and Saturday to paint additional elements and talk to curious community members about what comes next.

After all, like much of Pilato’s work, this is a “living mural.” In other words, the artist profiled last year by Smithsonian Magazine won’t simply finish painting this weekend and then leave the mural to sit over the ensuing decades. Like “Inspiration State College” on Hiester Street, he’ll make changes and additions whenever appropriate.

Pilato and Reese even have plans to expand the mural, with an additional section — about half the length of the current one — expected to be completed sometime before next summer. The two friends, who both graduated from State High a few years apart, haven’t ruled out eventually extending the mural even farther by tackling another side of the building.

Story behind the mural

When the two friends bumped into each other in December by happenstance, a simple exchange of pleasantries became something more when Pilato mentioned that he always wanted to paint The Mills Brothers — a famous singing quartet that broke color barriers, produced more than three dozen gold records and had connections to Bellefonte.

Pilato long admired the The Mills Brothers, as his father enjoyed their music, and the late Donna “Mama” King — an area activist, historian and pastor — often spoke of their local connections. After all, The Mills Brothers’ grandfather William H. Mills owned a Bellefonte barbershop, helped get the community’s schools desegregated and even once cut the hair of abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

One scene in the mural depicts Douglass in a barber chair getting his hair cut by Mills, while a framed photo of his famous grandchildren hangs nearby. Another part alludes to the Underground Railroad stops in Bellefonte, while another depicts Amelia Earhart, who once visited the high school and reportedly had great affection for the town.

As far as what other scenes, or local figures, to include, that’s part of the reason Pilato hopes community members drop by to say hello. He wants to hear what other Bellefonte history that residents want to celebrate, what figures are worth reverence and/or what moments to include.

“It’s such a beautiful town and it’s gone through such a renaissance in the last 10 years. It’s been freaking incredible,” Pilato said. “So we’re just so happy we could be a part of that.”

On Friday, one element Pilato will be adding to the mural is paintings of community dogs. Different picture frames are also painted on the mural, and Pilato hopes to tap Bellefonte Area students to eventually design those spaces — along with other areas, such as the bottle labels in the barbershop.

Pilato’s longtime painting partner Yuriy Karabash has also contributed every step of the way.

Centre County roots

Pilato still remembers leaving a window cracked open when he attended State High in the 1970s — so he could sneak in, at night.

The goal wasn’t vandalism or a heist involving test answers. He simply wanted to finish his school murals.

James Ritchey, formerly a longtime SCASD art teacher, had started a murals class at the district. And Pilato was hooked since middle school, earning a reputation around school as the kid who painted The Kinks’ Misfits album on the school ceiling and painted Pink Floyd on the walls. He was encouraged.

“And now I’m painting the ceiling of the second-oldest church on 42nd Street,” Pilato mused, referring to NYC’s Church of the Covenant, near the United Nations. “It’s f------ crazy.”

Pilato joked he couldn’t read or write well as a child, but he could draw. So his parents — including a mother who helped start Arts Fest — remained supportive of his gift. He looked at art as a way to transform landscapes and backgrounds, to take something blank or ugly and turn it into something beautiful.

But that thinking evolved and, again, he can credit his hometown for the inspiration.

When Penn State Renaissance man and community leader Eugene Lederer died in 2003, Pilato intended to add a halo to his portrait on the Hiester Street mural. A day after Lederer’s death, a young local boy named Andrew was then tragically hit and killed by a vehicle during a winterstorm.

Pilato still recalls calling up the mother and asking if she would be OK if he added her 7-year-old son’s portrait in front of Lederer’s portrait. “I don’t know where you go when you die,” he remembered telling her. “But I think Mr. Lederer and your son would be taking this walk together.”

She loved the idea. To this day, Lederer has a left hand on Andrew’s shoulder in the mural — and Andrew is holding a chalkboard that says “LOVE,” which friends and family have taken to tracing over so often that the word becomes thicker with every passing year.

Andrew’s mother and family used to sit across the street from the mural, back when “The Deli Restaurant” was still open. It felt like he was joining them for a bite, the mother would tell Pilato.

“My whole life changed with little Andrew,” Pilato said. “That’s where I really felt the power of art and what art can do.”

Fame & future

Pilato never forgot little Andrew or that lesson. It became the bedrock upon his future work and, instead of simply beautifying outdoor spaces, he also hoped to heal.

Maybe Pilato’s most breathlessly covered work is the 44-foot-long mural “Inspiration Orlando United,” which honors the victims of the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting, where 49 people were murdered in the gay-friendly venue.

The mural includes portraits of those wounded and those killed, in addition to first responders and grieving family members. Rainbow-colored hearts, doves and angels are scattered among the mural, which was shown in the Orlando Museum of Art last summer. Pilato, whose only daughter died 2 years before the shooting, called the work a “labor of love.”

“They say it’s the club nobody ever wants to freaking be in,” Pilato said about losing a child. “But, through the art, it was beautiful to be able to cry with another mom or father and heal alongside them.”

He listened to their stories. He drew their faces. He texted back and forth. In one case, while traveling in Puerto Rico, he even fielded a request from a mother who asked if Pilato could place flowers at her son’s grave.

The problem was the woman’s ex-husband discovered the son was gay and had him buried in a run-down cemetery with sunken graves and some unmarked plots. Pilato, Karabash and others spent more than an hour in a humid storm where they couldn’t tell if they were damp with rain or sweat. Then, as if it were a movie right on cue, Pilato swore his friends pointed out “the most perfect rainbow you’ve ever seen” right behind him.

“And Myra goes, ‘Michael, right there!’ And I looked down and it was his grave,” Pilato said. “She’s jumping up and down, and the mom’s on the phone. She’s going, ‘It’s our angels! It’s our angels!’ ”

Pilato tends not to believe in coincidences. He doesn’t always have a plan — during COVID, the Florida art gallery he was staying at lost its lease — but everything always seems to work out.

That traveling mural is now at the Manhattan church near the United Nations. And Pilato and his World Mural Project are now being hosted there.

Pilato has more projects and ideas in the pipeline but asked that they not be shared publicly just yet, at least not until contracts are finalized and every kink is ironed out. But he’s hoping to continue adding to his mural portfolio across Centre County, and he’s aiming to continue branching out across the country and globe.

His favorite part to painting murals isn’t seeing the finished product, he insisted. It’s the journey itself — learning about a town’s history, talking with its people and either learning something new or imparting a new understanding.

He can thank Centre County for many of those lessons — and he’s aiming to take them to Bellefonte this weekend.