Public Art Project
Roots & Springs
The Bridge Street Mural
A new public mural by artist Samara Ash is coming to the Bridge Street Bridge, celebrating LaBelle's place in the Florida Wildlife Corridor.
Rooted on the river.
Detail of the design. The full mural will be revealed at our meet-the-artist event.
About the Mural
Roots & Springs celebrates LaBelle's connection to the Caloosahatchee River and its place in the Florida Wildlife Corridor, nearly 18 million acres of connected wild and working lands across the state. Hendry County is a critical link in the Corridor, allowing wildlife to travel north toward Fisheating Creek and Florida's Heartland, south to Big Cypress and the Everglades, and southwest toward the Corkscrew watershed.
The mural will be painted beneath the Bridge Street Bridge, facing DeSoto Avenue next to Barron Park and the river. The project is funded by a $20,000 grant from the Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation, with additional in-kind support from local community partners.
The mural features LaBelle's official city bird, the cattle egret. Local kids chose the egret through the City Bird Project at Arts of the Inland Gallery's youth art camp, and the LaBelle City Commission adopted it as the official city bird in 2026.
The Florida Wildlife Corridor
The Florida Wildlife Corridor is a statewide network of connected natural and working lands that spans nearly 18 million acres across Florida. It helps protect the movement of wildlife, preserves important habitat, supports working ranches and forests, and safeguards water resources that communities depend on.
More than half of the Corridor is already conserved, while millions of additional acres remain identified as opportunity areas for future conservation. These connected landscapes support rare and at-risk species, including the Florida panther, while also providing benefits for recreation, agriculture, forestry, flood protection, and water quality.
The Corridor is about more than preserving undeveloped land. It is about maintaining the connections between Florida's natural systems, working landscapes, and communities so they can continue to function together over time.
Why This Partnership Matters
Public art offers an opportunity to make the idea of conservation more visible and accessible. Projects like Roots & Springs help connect the larger mission of the Florida Wildlife Corridor to the places where people live, work, gather, and experience their communities every day.
By bringing the story of Florida's landscapes into downtown LaBelle, the project encourages people to see conservation not as something happening somewhere else, but as part of the identity, history, and future of the community itself.
The Corridor at a Glance
- Nearly 18 million acres across Florida
- More than 9.6 million acres conserved
- Approximately 8.1 million acres identified as opportunity areas for future conservation
- Supports habitat for rare and at-risk species
- Includes ranchlands, timberlands, wetlands, rivers, forests, parks, and recreational lands
- Provides economic, recreational, agricultural, and environmental benefits across the state
Building on a Partnership
Roots & Springs isn't LaBelle's first project with the Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation. Last winter, LDRC partnered with the Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation and Barron Library to host "Together, We Are the Corridor," the Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation's traveling mural by Florida artist Christian Stanley. Three panels celebrating Florida's farming, fishing and ranching traditions were on display at the library from November 2025 through January 2026.
Why Under the Bridge?
The Bridge Street Bridge has been at the center of community conversation for decades. For years, the Florida Department of Transportation has identified the bridge for replacement.
That uncertainty, and the potential impact a future replacement could have on the layout of downtown LaBelle, has contributed to hesitation around investing in the immediate area. For many years, downtown has remained in a kind of holding pattern, with the fear that improvements made today could be disrupted or lost in the future.
The mural's location was chosen with that uncertainty in mind.
We believe downtown can no longer afford to wait for every unknown to be resolved before we invest in the place we have today. Whatever happens with the bridge, and however downtown may evolve if it is eventually replaced, this is still our downtown now.
Roots & Springs represents LDRC's commitment to protecting, improving, and investing in downtown LaBelle while also preparing for the changes that may come in the future.
More than a beautification project, the mural is a visible statement that change and preservation do not have to be opposing ideas. We can care for what exists today while still planning thoughtfully for what comes next.
Meet the Artist
Samara Ash (b. Bogotá, Colombia) is a Colombian-American interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans large-scale public art, painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and emerging technologies. A Florida resident for more than twenty years, her site-responsive, symbol-rich works explore transformation, time, migration, resilience, and our interconnectedness with the natural world.
A valedictorian graduate of the University of Florida through New World School of the Arts, Ash has created public-art projects with the Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation, municipalities across the United States, cultural institutions, and international partners. Her work has been exhibited and presented at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; University of Miami; Espronceda Institute of Art & Culture in Barcelona; and across the Mediterranean. Her honors include the Fountainhead Arts Residency, ICA Miami Art + Research Center Residency, Women Supporting the Arts Grant, MIFA Public Art Prize, and Street Art Cities Top 15 Murals Worldwide recognition. She has presented lectures and public conversations internationally, and her work has been featured by Art Plugged, FOX, CBS, NBC, NPR, Telemundo 51, and the Miami Herald.
How the Artist Was Selected
Roots & Springs was chosen through an open, community-led process. LDRC released a call for artists through CaFÉ (CallForEntry.org) and led a selection committee of local leaders and project partners, who reviewed each submission based on the artist's statement, renderings, prior work, budget and resume.
Selection Committee
Project Partners
Thank you to our community partners providing in-kind support. More to come.