Work starts on Amelia Earhart mural in downtown Lafayette
Artist behind Lincoln/Kennedy/Douglass mural on Main Street preps one of famed Purdue aviator a block away. Plus, school board filings ahead of Thursday deadline. WL childcare center session postponed
Zach Curtis, a Michigan-based artist behind the mural of Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and John F. Kennedy that peeked out over the corner of Main and Seventh streets in 2025, is back in downtown for the next week to work on a new mural – this one of aviator and Purdue legend Amelia Earhart.
Curtis spent Wednesday morning spraying two coats of primer on the two-story block wall outside 835 Main St., home of Wanderlust Coffee Roaster, as he tried to beat the rain to get prep work done for what’s expected to be a week’s worth of work.
He said the next rounds would be painting a background before getting into a few days of sketching and then into the rest of the mural.
“The boring things, now,” Curtis said while working from a lift Wednesday morning. “The fun stuff after that.”
Plans for the Earhart mural came shortly after Curtis finished work of the Douglass/Lincoln/Kennedy piece in October 2025, as a project commissioned by the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the city and others.
“After that one was up, we received a lot of positive feedback – it was so great,” Diana Vice, a DAR member helping to head up the mural project, said this week. “We heard from a lot people who said they appreciated it, too, but what about the great ladies of Lafayette?”
