After Old MacDonald’s, the most celebrated farm in children’s literature is probably the one imagined by E.B. White for his 1952 novel Charlotte’s Web. At the West Tisbury Free Public Library, this beloved story has now escaped from its bookbinding and taken shape on the wall as the latest literary mural by local decorative painter Linda Carnegie.
Anyone who’s read the tale will recognize Wilbur the pig, Templeton the rat, the goose and her goslings and young Fern Arable in Ms. Carnegie’s mural, which is mounted at kids-eye level in the library’s children’s room. Charlotte, the book’s eight-legged heroine, hangs modestly above them in the space between two office windows.
But instead of “SOME PIG,” the letters woven into her web near the ceiling are “WTL,” for West Tisbury Library.
“That was really hard for me up there, because I can’t put my arm up very easily,” said Ms. Carnegie, who fractured her right elbow in a fall while gardening in 2016.
This handicap meant she had to create most of the Charlotte’s Web mural on canvas panels that were then affixed to the library wall. While she hopes an operation in January will help her get back to painting vertical surfaces again, there is an advantage to the two-stage installation: in case of future renovations, Wilbur and his barnyard friends can be rolled up and relocated.
By comparison, when the old West Tisbury library was demolished a few years ago, the Brazilian rainforest Ms. Carnegie had painted in the basement was reduced to rubble along with the walls that held it. Only one piece was sawed out and preserved, a colorful parrot that now has a place atop a shelf in the new children’s room.
A grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council funded the latest mural, which joins several others Ms. Carnegie has painted in the new library. Her tall trees leaf out around doorways and alcoves, their boles and branches occupied by character creatures such as Beatrix Potter’s Squirrel Nutkin, Roald Dahl’s Mr. Fox and an owl from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter world. From the real world of Martha’s Vineyard history, chicken-loving human Nancy Luce is there as well, tenderly holding a member of her flock.
Adding Wilbur and the gang was also Ms. Carnegie’s idea, when approached by children’s librarian Nelia Decker about creating a new mural. “I suggested this one because I’m a pig person,” she said. Her vanity license plate reads XOINK. “I just think they’re the cutest things.”
In fact, Wilbur was the first pig she ever loved, as a child reading Charlotte’s Web for the first time. “He is my original pig.”
Soon after finishing the book Ms. Carnegie discovered she was born in the Chinese year of the pig — cementing a lifelong affection for the porcine.
A sought-after muralist and trompe-l’oeil painter who usually works for private customers, Ms. Carnegie first came to the Vineyard as a soon-to-be mom in 1974 — “the year of Jaws,” she recalled. When the film came out the following year, “it was my son’s first movie. I was nursing him in the theater,” she recalled.
As a new arrival to the Vineyard, she began decorating stair risers for Island homeowners, and soon was creating the original, Rousseau-themed Hot Tin Roof murals with painting partner Margot Datz. She has traveled as far as Los Angeles and Seattle to paint commissions.
Over the years, Ms. Carnegie has expanded her repertoire to include both large and small works.A mural she painted for Mass General Pediatrics extends for two full floors, while in partnership with Nancy Vietor she designs a line of coastal-themed table dressing and home goods called Carnegie Blair.
Ms. Carnegie has also illustrated a children’s book by Shirley Mayhew, based on events in 1963 when the Islander ferry brought a circus to Martha’s Vineyard.
“I love doing stuff for children,” she said.
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