Great Lakes Contracting Donates Mural To City of Davison

A portion of downtown Davison looks like it has stepped back in time. A mural is being painted that shows what the city looked like 75 years ago.
Gregg Bugala has spent the past few days painting a black-and-white mural on the side of a building at 2nd Street and Main. It gives the pubic a view of the town in the late 1930s.

I like doing the old time pictures in grays. For one thing, the gray doesn’t fade like color does,
said Gregg Bugala, a mural artist from Fenton. Davison is celebrating 125 years as a city and Bugala wanted to bring a nostalgic feel to his mural of downtown.

ABC 12 – WJRT – Flint, MI

“Right now I’m painting the Davison Hotel which is now gone, but everybody remembers,” Bugala said. Great Lakes 1-800 PAINTING of Davison commissioned the mural. Bugala often get vocal support from passers-by.

“Older folks say, ‘Good job, you got it right. Looks just like it,’” he said.

He realizes he’s not Michelangelo working on the Sistine Chapel. “I’m a walldog because I’m working on wall all the time,” Bugala said. But painting a mural helps him get in touch with his inner artist. “I feel like Picasso doing an abstract painting,” he said. While he’s working with a black and white picture, he feels free to take some liberties.

“In the picture that I’m using there are no people in it and I’m wondering why so I’ve got to add some people to the picture to make look more alive like a real downtown,” he said.

And just like Rembrandt, Bugala may add his own image to the mural. “Since I’m a bicyclist, I might have myself riding an old bicycle through town,” he said. Bugala said it’s kind of satisfying to know the work will be visible in Davison for the next 15 years or longer.

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