Five years ago, Michelle Benson teamed up with Jim and Marcy Smith of The Merchant's Bar (aka "The Merch") located in downtown Sault Ste. Marie, to create a stunning mural depicting the final moments of the Edmund Fitzgerald on that fateful Nov. 1975 day.
But how the idea came about was not how one might think.
It started as scribbling a picture on a napkin in Arizona and turned into a stunning piece of art, The Legend Lives On, a tribute to the Edmund Fitzgerald.
Then in early summer 2019, Benson made her way back to the Soo to visit friends and family, but also to work on this massive mural project on the side of The Merch.
Benson teamed up with Sally Jubar. They focused on wanting to capture the dramatic waves of a Lake Superior storm and what brought the Fitzgerald down.
"The ship image is actually a ghost image of the Edmund Fitzgerald. So it’s obscured on purpose. And then the waves are what the drawing-in factor and the dramatic factor," Benson said.
People were so impressed by her work, they wanted her to beautify even more of the bare downtown walls.
"The response five years ago was amazing. I got a lot of feedback. People love the historical aspect. I just want to make sure it stays looking good. For going through five winters, it held up really well," Benson said.
For this three-day project, Benson got help from her son, Pierce Ballantyne, who was visiting from Arizona.
While Benson was working on this latest refresh, some people and business owners approached her to possibly do other walls in the city.
"One job leads to another. I do get paid for this from The Merch, yes," Benson added.
Benson said she graduated from Rudyard many moons ago and lived in Arizona for 22 years and this will be her fourth year back in the area teaching art at Rudyard schools.
Previously while she taught in Arizona, she would leave every summer and paint murals in California, Colorado and in our area here. Benson moved back to the area permanently in 2021.
Once school starts back up in a couple of weeks, Benson will be working on murals inside the school representing local communities along the railway in the school district.
