EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE: The Forest of Dreams

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — Turning a 240 foot eye sore into a work of art is extraordinary in itself. But uniting a community in the process? A feat like that is an entirely new level of awesomeness. WWAY’s Daniel Seamans spotlights someone who did it. She’s our Extraordinary Person of the Week!

The story begins at the corner of 10th and Fanning in Wilmington. “I think what was the best part was the diversity of the response,” Janna Siegel Robertson told Daniel Seamans.

It’s a story of turtles, owls, and other wild walks of life. It’s a story from all walks of life.

“I’m an artist, so I thought it would be fun to do some research and teach kids out at Dreams of Wilmington,” Janna said, “so I asked to come down here.”

Janna wanted to bring out the beauty in a forgotten part of the city. Her grassroots project brought out something bigger. “Not only just the Dream’s people, the non-profits and the schools,” Janna said, “I had businesses, people who drove by who said I need to be a part of that.”

More than 600 volunteers would join her mission in 2016, each donating time and money to create a Forest of Dreams. 76 creatures representing different community groups and sponsors can be found on the wall.

“The mural actually has a whole story behind it,” she said, “there’s a poem on the wall.”

Frozen in time are personal storylines.

“This is Iggy, the dog he loved,” she said of the hound now living in memoriam.

“There might be hidden things here, might not, and this is always changing,” she said as she pointed to a tree with fairy doors attached.

Something you won’t see change is Janna’s own masterful welcoming reptile. “Since I originally wanted to teach a concrete class at Dreams, that’s what Wally is,16 bags of concrete over a broken brick wall,” she said.

Keeping Wally company is a creature created by her daughter.

“The first creature that was ever designed was this one by my mom and she was like, Jessie, why don’t you create a creature so that we can have an example so all the other organizations can create one, so I drew this,” Janna’s daughter, Jessie, said. Jessie spent more than 400 hours working alongside her mom on the project.

Janna’s dream was to bring some beauty to an area that hadn’t seen any in quite some time. A Forest of Dreams. But the reality,  Janna Siegel Robertson, is that you brought out the beauty in our entire community. And that makes you, extraordinary.

If you’d like to follow the upcoming projects going on around the mural as it expands its beautification project, click here.