CARRBORO FIRE STATION
Carrboro, NC
An Enthusiastic Community
In the summer of 2016, Matt Willey brought The Good of the Hive to Fire Station #1 on West Main Street in Carrboro, North Carolina — a town that had declared itself a Bee City USA in 2014 and responded to Willey’s open call for mural sites with such infectious enthusiasm that he knew immediately he had to go. When he put out the word asking who would like to participate, he received six different personal inquiries from people in Carrboro alone, complete with pictures and ideas.
Photos on this page provided by Meg Morgan.
The Location
The choice of the fire station as the mural’s home was not incidental — it was deeply intentional. Willey felt the fire station was the perfect location because a fire station is a natural metaphor for a hive: a place where individuals subordinate themselves to the collective good, always on call, always ready to protect the community around them — and this particular station even had a female Chief at the helm, mirroring the queen bee at the center of every hive.
The Community
Like worker bees humming with focused purpose, the firefighters of Carrboro rush toward danger rather than away from it, their every action oriented toward the healing and safety of others. The firefighters themselves became part of the creation, helping paint flower petals as Willey painted his bees.
The Design
and the design evolved organically as Willey worked — his original plan had no flowers in it, but as his understanding of the inextricable bond between bees and flowers deepened, he couldn’t stop seeing the bees intertwining with blossoms in the upper right of the composition, a shift that rippled through the entire design.
